Licensing licensing licensing - ESX Essentials

[MizComputing]

Hi There,

If I purcase "esx essentials" for my two standalone esxi 4.0 hosts do I have to manage them using a vcenter server or can I continue to manage them standalone? I do not want the hassel of Vcenter....the esxi hosts are for testing only.

Ta

p.s. the reason I ask is because the quote from the supplier says the hosts must be managed by vcenter included in the essentials bundle.

[Troy_Clavell]

yes, you can still manage them standalone, but you lose all the features vCenter offers. Which in base essentials really is only VUM and a central point of managment.

[golddiggie]

The "hassle" of setting up a vCenter Server is far outweighed by the benefits of having one... You get a LOT more administrative flexibility, as well as added functionality that you simply will never have by just connecting to the host servers... You won't have any additional functions you get from vCenter... One very nice one, that you DO have with the straight "essentials kit" is Update Manager... With that, updating your host servers becomes a very easy task...

I'd say that the "supplier" doesn't know what he's talking about... It's not required to use vCenter, it just makes more sense too... Besides, with vCenter, you can manage all of your hosts in a single pane of glass. Without it, you'll need to log into each one, and keep the vSphere Client running, anytime you want to do anything with the hosts or VM's on those hosts... With vCenter, you have just one session (vSphere Client) running where you can manage all the hosts and VM's at any point without running additional sessions...

From the sounds of it, whoever you got the info from (on the supplier side) doesn't really know the VMware products... I'd suggest going to another vendor/VAR that actually knows the products... Premier partners typically have people that know the products, and will give you accurate information... You'll also probably get better pricing than what you got from the company you used...

VMware VCP4

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[MizComputing]

Hmmmmm,

You've convinced me....

We do have an existing vcenter server (not owned by me).

It consists of one datacenter and two clusters (one is 3.5 and the other is 4.0)

Is it possible to add these esxi hosts to the vcenter by doing the following.

1. Assign the hosts their key using configuration, license features....etc

2. Then using vcenter, simply "add host" adding the esxi hosts to the vcenter?

Will this cause any problems for the existing clusters?

Thanks v much for your quick replies,

[golddiggie]

How many hosts you have, in the vCenter Server, is dictated by which vCenter Server license you have... If you have the license that will allow the count of hosts you're looking to add, then you can simply add the hosts to the vCenter configuration, building the clusters as you need to.

You will want the vCenter Server version to be at least the same level as the highest level in any host... So, if you have a new setup using ESX/ESXi 4.1, you'll need to have vCenter 4.1 in place (make sure you read the docs for installing/configuring it, since it has changed since version 4.0)... You can pull the older hosts into the new configuration as you wish... Simply remove the host from the inventory of the old vCenter Server and then add it to the new one, in the correct cluster. You can keep the old vCenter Server kicking around while you do this, so that you have a "fall-back" position (CYA)...

I would make the vCenter Server as a VM... I've done this in the past couple of environments I've built (under releases 3.5 and 4.0) without any issue at all. Unless you have a LARGE host count, you can easily use a VM for the vCenter Server... You'll see even more benefits once you've upgraded from the base (Essentials) edition into something with more features (such as vMotion and HA)... The past two environments I've set up were using Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions... Really, really great feature sets there... In my eyes, and the people I reported to, money well spent... I do understand that you cannot always get the top end, but see about getting the budget allocated for next budget year, for when it's time to renew the licenses, to upgrade the version to something with more features...

VMware VCP4

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