VMWare and MS EES

[TMODAlpha]

Hello,

Planning a VMWare solution and licensing is confusing as hell. Assuming we will have an EES agreement in place, I have to buy a license per each VM I'm running (max of 2 at first). So I would need either an enterprise license, data centre or 2 standards? Does this work out?

I this is the case, can I buy 2 standard 2008 r2 OEM and then use my EES key for standard to license the 2 VMs?

Also, I'm looking at VMWare vSphere essentials for around £500 per physical CPU. Does this sound about right? I don't need vMotion or anything like that, just want to consolidate future resources, with a view to upgrade later.

Thanks

[ChrisH]

You are correct you will need 2 separate standard licences or an enterprise/data centre license.

I know they have changed the pricing structure but £500 per physical CPU sounds a lot to me. I'm sure we didn't pay much more than that for a 6 CPU entitlement although that was before the price structure changed. If I was you I would take a serious look at Hyper V as I am at the moment. If you are not wanting the advanced VMware features, hyper V with SCVMM would work out cheaper and you will still get live migration etc as long as you were running clustered storage.

[IrritableTech]

Xen server from citrix is another option. Running it here without ever paying a penny to them. The free version allows live migration, as long as you're running the VMs on shared storage as ChrisH points out.

[TMODAlpha]

Looking at VMware for view in the future.

[TMODAlpha]

Which leads me to another question, if I use old equipment as a fat client running thin station, can I use the license that came with the machine, against the EES agreement and then use that to license the VMs?

[teejay]

Right, I presume you are on about the Microsoft Licencing for your VM's, not the VMWare licensing?
First off, you don't need the MS OEM licences for server operating systems, you only need that for Desktop products. You would want to licence either 2008 R2 Enterprise which allows 4 instances of the OS per physical machine or Datacenter which allows unlimited instances per physical machine. See Microsoft Volume Licensing - Microsoft Licensing for Virtualization

[TMODAlpha]

I meant for virtual desktop machines. How do you license them with ms?

[CyberNerd]

KVM will do live migrations without clustered storage, its free unless you want to buy support for it.

[marksams]

Hi, I recently called Microsoft about this. They told me that as long as you have the original OEM licenses for the old desktop hardware being repurposed as a thin client, and you are an EES subscriber with the Windows 7 upgrade license, then you are also licensed to run Windows 7 as virtual desktops. You might want to check out the software assurance benefit with EES called Windows Fundamentals for repurposing the old desktop hardware.

[TMODAlpha]

Hi, I recently called Microsoft about this. They told me that as long as you have the original OEM licenses for the old desktop hardware being repurposed as a thin client, and you are an EES subscriber with the Windows 7 upgrade license, then you are also licensed to run Windows 7 as virtual desktops. You might want to check out the software assurance benefit with EES called Windows Fundamentals for repurposing the old desktop hardware.

Thanks, that's what I was after