VMware vSphere

Hi All,

I have a license from my employer and am planning a new server build for our lab environment.  The new server will have qty two 10 core processors, so 20 cores.

I checked our license and noticed something:

Product: VMware vSphere 6 Hypervisor Licensed for 2 physical CPUs (unlimited cores per CPU)

License Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Expires: Never

Product Features:

    Up to 8-way virtual SMP

Does the 8 way vSMP mean that I can only assign a maximum of 8 cores per Virtual Machine? 

If so, is there a different license that I can upgrade to that will allow at least 18 cores to be assigned to a single VM?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

What you have is a free license, and 8-way virtual SMP means that ESXi will only schedule on 8 cores regardless of how many vCPUs you allocate to a given VM.

Well then... I didn't know that this was a free license.  Thanks.

Do you know what I would need to purchase to have 18-20 way virtual SMP?  I will have a very basic set-up.. 2 to 3 VMs on one piece of Hardware.

Steve

You'll need any sort of paid license, even Essentials would do. See also: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2109507

That chart is exactly what I have been looking for... Thank You again.

Last question... I currently have ESXi 6.0 running on 2 machines with the free license... If I purchase Essentials do I have to re-deploy or can I simply plug in a license key?

Cheers.

Just plug in the key and it'll unlock that functionality.

does that mean it will only do max 8 cpus per vm, or max 8 for the whole system?

I'm currently on a 6 core/12 thread CPU, but I plan to upgrade to 14c/28t cpu.  

It will only allow 8 virtual CPU's to be assigned to each virtual machine.  You can have 10 virtual machines, each with 8 vCPU's.  The limit is per virtual machine.  Hope that helps.