vSphere licensing doubts

[brosiglabtime]

Hi,

Today we run a server with a free license of ESXi.

It's been up to our needs until we had to allocate more than 8 virtual cores to one specific virtual machine.

We are considering purchasing  one VMware vSphere Essentials Kits license, but its not clear if any VMware vSphere license unlocks more virtual cores per vm, or if only specific editions to that.

Can anyone clarify this foro me?

On the brochure (https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-vsphere-vsom-pricing-whitepaper.pdf​), the only mention is this:

VMware vSphere Hypervisor vSphere Hypervisor is a free product that provides a simple way to get started with virtualization at no cost. It provides only basic virtualization capabilities, allowing customers to virtualize servers and run applications in VMs in a matter of minutes. vSphere Hypervisor cannot connect to vCenter Server and therefore cannot be centrally managed. Users can remotely manage individual vSphere Hypervisor hosts using the VMware vSphere Client. There are no restrictions on the number of physical CPUs per host and on the amount of RAM per server/host. The maximum vCPUs per VM is eight.

Thanks

[daphnissov]

Yes, any paid edition of vSphere removes that 8 vCPU limitation you just noticed.

[brosiglabtime]

Thanks for your response.

Another question: on the store, when adding the Essentials Kit to the cart, it shows this way:

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit for 3 hosts (Max 2 processors per host) + Subscription for 1 Year

My machine has 4 processors. The way that esx validates the license will allow me to use this way?

Thanks again.

[daphnissov]

It counts a processor as a socket, not a physical core. Your servers can only have up to two sockets pet host.

[brosiglabtime]

So on my case that my server has 4 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E7- 4860 @ 2.27GHz the Essentials doesn't cover it, im right?

In this case i will need to buy witch version?

Thanks again.

[daphnissov]

You should still be able to use an Essentials license, but you would only have capacity left for one server having at most two sockets, not a second quad socket host.

[brosiglabtime]

So if my goal is to use only with this one server with 4 physical processors, the Essentials Kit does the trick, right?
I'll buy it then.

Thanks again for your time.

[a_p_]

As far as I know

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit for 3 hosts (Max 2 processors per host)

is a hard limit. So the answer is no, you need vSphere Standard or better.

André

[daphnissov]

If it is currently max two sockets currently (I don't think it used to be) then André is right and I'm wrong.

[brosiglabtime]

Thanks again you both.

I'll try again to reach VMware sales to remove this doubt.

I've tried earlier today by phone, but there was no one available here in Brazil.

If i manage to get a definitive answer to this I'll post here so any other people looking for this can find it.

I should be more clear on the public documentation.

[a_p_]

Good luck ;-)

from https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/vmware-vsphere_pricing-white-paper.pdf

VMware vSphere Essentials Kits

~snip~

Scalability limits for the Essentials Kits are product-enforced and cannot be extended other than by upgrading the whole kit to an Acceleration Kit ...

~snip~

André

[brosiglabtime]

Thanks again André,

Still no lucky trying contact to VMware.

Humbling around i've found this:
https://tco.vmware.com/tcocalculator/index.html?fromIndex1=1

https://tco.vmware.com/tcocalculator/index.html?fromIndex1=1

If you fill the form, it looks like you could with an Essentials license apply it to one machine with 4 physical processors. But still not so clear.

The struggle is that from around U$600 for the Essentials we would have to jump for U$5,072.00 plus vCenter (if we opt to)