Virtual Center Question

[Liberto29]

Hi,

I am looking into VMware and am planning on having 2 or 3 ESX servers. I noticed that each version we are looking at comes with a Virtual Center agent, but I saw that there is another Virtual Center license that we can buy that costs a good chunk of change.

Can anyone shed any light on VMware's licensing for this product. In order to recognize my ESX servers do I need to buy a Virtual Center license?

Thanks,
Lib

[ezzauk]

The Virtual Center Licence allows you to control and manage all your ESX servers and licences in one place. You will aslo need this if your going to start doing VMotion/HA/Resource Pooling. Etc. You will notice alot of the features in VM Infrastructure client are missing untill you install Virtual Center.

Hope this helps

[Theblacksheep]

You can get the 'Vcenter server foundation' which is cheaper but restricts the number of ESXi (well, Vi3) to 3 that can be managed by vcenter.

You need full Vi3 licences (not just free ESXi) with 'vcenter server agent' to support management.

[Liberto29]

Thanks for the help. I think eventually we are going to have more ESX servers so I guess I will have to make the case for Virtual Center.

I did find out that our backup software vendor has a backup agent for Virtual Center that lets me buy one license to manage all my ESX servers. This will help as we expand because we won't have to purchase agents for each host or VM.

Thanks again!
Lib