Pricing / Licensing of Converter Enterprise

[deltavista]

We bought 2 ESX Standard Licenses (No Virtual Center) and would like to convert a couple of physical machines onto this ESX Server.

Unfortunately, it seems that you have to have VMWare Converter Enterprise in order to convert to Physical to ESX, but it would be free if we would have Virtual Center.

Is that possible?? (I cant believe it because ESX without using the Converter tool does not make good sense to me...)

Can we also buy VMWare Converter as a standalone package? How much does such it costs?

Thank you very much for a short answer.

[admin]

Converter is a free download. An enterprise license is available if you have VirtualCenter, and the enterprise license unlocks certain features-- concurrent tasks and cold clone.

You CAN use the free starter version to convert a physical machine to ESX Server. You have a limitation which the enterprise version unlocks...with the starter you have to install Converter ON THE MACHINE you want to convert/import to send it directly to ESX Server. You cannot run Converter on a separate machine and connect to your intended machine (remote clone) and send it directly to ESX Server without the enteprise version. A workaround would be to create a standalone VM as a destination, and then as a second step import that VM to ESX Server.

The Enterprise license is not available for sale separately; it is obtained by purchasing VirtualCenter.

[deltavista]

Perfect.

Although this means a lot of more work, at least it seems to work to import physical machines to ESX without having VC.

Thank you very much for your help!

[admin]

Note, having VC currently is only a means to obtain the enterprise license, as well as an alternate method to connect to ESX Servers. In the future, Converter enterprise functionality will likely be integrated into VC.

You may want to consider purchasing VC-- it also gives you templates, cloning, hot migrations using VMotion, and access to VMware HA and DRS.

[Jasemccarty]

You may want to consider purchasing VC-- it also

gives you ... hot migrations using

VMotion, and access to VMware HA and DRS.

It doesn't really give you these, but rather the ability to use them if you pay for their licensing costs as well.

[J-J-M]

To be clear...VMotion is only "included" with the Enterprise version. With Starter and Standard you have to buy the VMotion license.

Over the course of the last 2 months we...bought 1 ESX Starter...bought a 2nd for fail-over...bought VC for management...bought VMotion...and NOW I gotta pony up the cash for STANDARD if I want to have VM's that use multiple processors.

I kinda feel like VMWare is aiming their licensing at LARGE companies and med-sized shops get nickel and dimed to death

[admin]

Yes, VMotion is licensed by ESX Server host and the VI3 Enterprise license for hosts includes that (as well as HA DRS, and Virtual SMP). For VI3 Starter and Standard users, VMotion can be licensed separately. VirtualCenter is required to initiate VMotion.

VI3 Standard also includes Virtual SMP that allows you to run VMs that see more than 1 vCPU at a time. You should note that giving VMs more vCPUs isn't always a good thing from a total utilization perspective. If you have VMs that could get by with 1 vCPU for their workloads, giving these VMs 2 vCPUs can lower your overall host utilization because these VMs can hog more CPU cycles than they really need and deprive those cycles from other VMs that do need them. Therefore, consider Virtual SMP for VMs that have multithreaded applications that can truly scale to use additional processors and have enough usage that they will actually need the additional horsepower.

[Treblig]

You state that convertor is a free download and that the enterprise license is available if you have Virtual Center.

Well, I'm having trouble with that. We have the VCenter 2, we have downloaded the Converter, but , we do not know where to obtain that enterprise license of the converter. Where can you get that. Have tried via support but that was not helpfull. They gave me the FAcode of my Virtual center and told me to activate that one. But where they didn't know Do you have a suggestion how to obtain the enterprise license?

PS. Our licenses are central licenses.

Many thx.

[admin]

Check your account on www.vmware.com by logging in and look for your license code there.