VMware vSphere 5 Standard Licensing

[rameuniver]

I have few doubts regarding vSphere Licensing:

1) we have the license "VMware vSphere 5 Standard Licensed for 2 physical CPUs (unlimited cores per CPU)", for how many physical hosts can i use this license?

2) We have vCenter Server in which two physcial hosts are connected, now we have to migrate all  VMs to the new ESXi hosts, how can i use the same licenses?

3) How could i know the number of hosts my vCenter server supporting ?

[vGuy]

I suggest you to go through the below links for better understanding of vSphere 5 licensing per edition. This is a big change from vSphere 4 edition.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html

Basically, with 2 Standard licenses you will be able to use a) 1 host with 2 Physical CPUs OR b) 2 hosts with single Physical CPU each.

Each standard edition license is also limited to 32 GB of vRAM. So in total you can have virtual machines assigned with max. 64 GB of memory allocation.

The no. of hosts manageable with vCenter foundation is 3 and with vCenter standard edition you can manage 1000 hosts..

[rameuniver]

We have vCenter Server in which two physcial hosts are connected, now we  have to migrate all  VMs to the new ESXi hosts, how can i use the same  licenses?

[Mauro Bonder]

Hello,

You can register same license in other host, but you need put old in evaluation mode (60 days trial) (Configuration > Licensed Features > Edit)

[vGuy]

If the existing ESXi hosts are not already licensed, then as mentioned above you can apply the same licence keys in Licensed Features tab in Configuration of each host.

Since you're using Standard license, take note the max. amount of vRAM that can be allocated to VMs per each socket  license (physical cpu) is 32GB.

[a_p_]

Just to repeat/clarify:

- vCenter Server Standard supports up to 1000 hosts

- one CPU licenses (Standard, Enterprise or Enterprise Plus) is needed for each physical processor/socket

Regarding migration. You cannot set an existing host to Evaluation mode after the 60 day period has expired. What you will usually do is to install the new hosts and let them run in the 60-day Evaluation Mode until the VMs are migrated and the old hosts are removed from the vCenter Server management. Removing the old hosts will free up the licenses, which then can be assigned to the new hosts.

André