The number of licenses, editions, and latest features that VMware vSphere provides has grown over the years, which may sometimes cause confusion among users.
This blog post aims at providing an overview of the VMware vSphere editions and licensing in order to help you choose one that is the best suited for your virtual environment. VMware vSphere previously known as VMware Infrastructure is a cloud computing virtualization platform that includes a set of server virtualization products, with ESXi hypervisor and vCenter functioning as its core components. VMware vSphere allows you to easily create and manage multiple virtual machines VMs , distribute workloads across clouds and devices, provide on-demand scalability, ensure data security, and build a virtual environment that can comply with your specific business needs.
Due to the exponential growth of businesses, IT infrastructures are becoming more complex, which calls for periodic revisions and updates in order to eliminate any issues that may arise, as well as add new features to the application program interface API.
VMware vSphere 6. VSphere Enterprise Plus is mainly used by medium to large sized organizations. This is an optimal solution for businesses of all sizes, as it enables you to cut hardware costs as well as optimize infrastructure performance with the help of various IT services. These services include: capacity optimization, intelligent workload placement and rebalance, and health monitoring. AppDefense is a VMware product that protects applications that run in virtualized environments.
Thus, a high-level protection of data, infrastructure, and user access is ensured. VMware vSphere Platinum allows you to manage and secure running workflows, even in a case of a security incident. This edition of vSphere offers built-in security that operates on the basis of machine learning. This way, any threats in your virtual environment are automatically detected, which can ensure a prompt response from your side.
An acceleration kit typically includes six processor licenses for vSphere as well as a license for one instance of vCenter Server Standard. A special feature of vSphere Acceleration Kits is that their components can be upgraded and renewed individually, on your demand.
Small businesses choose VMware vSphere Essentials Kits because they function as all-in-one solutions that are capable of managing small virtual environments. Each of the vSphere Essentials Kits consists of six processor licenses for vSphere as well as a license for one instance of vCenter Server Essentials.
Unlike vSphere Acceleration Kits, the components of the Essentials Kits cannot be scaled up or down individually, and any modifications are applied to the product as a whole. The vSphere Essentials Kit provides management of applications and server consolidation, which allows you to cut unnecessary costs; and makes it an ideal choice for small offices. Support can be purchased by choice, and is available on a per-incident basis.
This type of kit is mainly designed for small businesses that want to ensure minimum downtime and high application availability, without incurring large costs. Support and subscription for Essentials Plus is purchased separately and it is active for one year. VMware vSphere Desktop is a special vSphere edition that is used for managing desktop virtualization. This edition includes the features and IT services that are present in the vSphere Enterprise Plus edition.
On-demand scalability, high availability, as well as capacity management allow you to easily monitor your desktop workloads. Lon in to vCenter as an administrator or other user that has the Global. Licenses privilege. Go to the Configuration tab, and click Licensing in the Settings section to configure vCenter Server licensing.
On the Licensing page, you see the current license assigned to your vCenter, such as an Evaluation license or other license. You can also see information about the product, number of used instances, license expiration, and licensed features.
The license name is displayed in the list of available licenses in vCenter. Click the i icon to see the features that are available for your license. If the license is valid, you should see the appropriate message in the Assignment Validation section at the bottom of the window. Hit OK to save the settings. Now you can go to the Existing licenses tab and verify that your license has been assigned.
On this page, you can see all the licenses that you have added to your vCenter Server before. In my example, 60 days have passed since the installation of vCenter, and the Evaluation license is inactive. You can select any available license in this list, then hit OK to apply this license, save settings, and close the Assign License window. This blog post has covered VMware vCenter Server licensing to understand how vCenter is licensed and the differences between vCenter editions.
Organizations having small virtual environments might choose vCenter Server for Essentials or vCenter Server Foundation. Organizations having large virtual environments, including a large number of ESXi hosts with higher demands such as clustering, high availability, fault tolerance, and live migration, should consider using the VMware vCenter Server Standard license that includes all available features.
In addition to VMware vSphere, the solution supports data protection for other virtual, cloud, physical and SaaS platforms. During the trial period, you can use all the features in the top license edition vSphere Enterprise Plus and vCenter Server Standard. If you assign a license for vCenter, you can switch back to the evaluation mode within 60 days from installing the vCenter Server. The evaluation license expires after 60 days. For example, if you install vCenter and use vCenter in the evaluation mode for 30 days, then buy and assign the license, you have 30 days remaining during which you can switch from the licensed mode to the evaluation mode.
When the evaluation license expires, and there is no other license, all ESXi hosts added to vCenter inventory are disconnected from vCenter. If you assign a vCenter Server license after the evaluation license expires, ESXi hosts that were added to vCenter previously are reconnected to vCenter Server automatically.
A license key provided for VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server is a character alphanumeric string that is not tied to hardware. VMware vSphere licenses and vCenter licenses have no time limitation on using the appropriate VMware products. There are three editions of VMware vCenter 7. You can create datacenters and clusters, but VMs can be migrated only when powered off no live migration. VMware vCenter Server Foundation is intended primarily for smaller environments.
This is the top edition of vCenter. Customers can always pay and upgrade an existing license of vSphere and vCenter to a higher edition. In case of an upgrade, a new license key is issued, and the old original key is deactivated. You should replace the existing license with a new one. If you upgrade vCenter Server to a newer version that starts with the same number, your license is preserved, and vCenter continues to work with the assigned license for example, if you upgrade vCenter 6.
If you upgrade vCenter to a major version that starts with a different number, the evaluation mode restarts, and you need to assign a new license for example, if you upgrade vCenter 6.
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