VMWare ESXi and Vsphere licenses

[m1ddy]

Hi Guys,

I am playing with ESXi as a virtualisation solution and have a quick question about licensing. I installed ESXi 4 no problems. It installs in evaluation mode so it has all the bells and whistles for 60 days. I entered the licnese code I obtained when i downloaded ESXi 4.0 so its a perm license. i dont need all the flashy stuff at the mo, just the hypervisor.

I then browsed to the servers IP and downloaded vSphere. Installed this no probs and connected to the host. My question is this....is vSphere free to use? or is it going to stop working after 60 days? Bit confused tbh!!

Thankyooooou

[ahuxham]

vSphere costs, around £540 for the program itself, and you have to bundle support in as well which is circa £160, you can't have the program without support, so you're looking at £700 for vSphere.

ESXi 4.0 is free as you stated, code works, but to manage your machines in an easy fashion, you have to purchase vSphere, you could use the CLI to create, change, deploy machines, but you're going to have to read alot of documents to get what you want.

[m1ddy]

Damn

Theres no where I can see that it says this. I am not using VCentre server as I only have 1 host so vsphere is connecting straight to it. Is there no other way to create / manage virtual machines and resources other than vsphere?

[ahuxham]

There is, as I explained earlier, the Command Line Interface. Browse to your ESXi web address and on the right side you have an option for the CLI, you can create and manage your server this way, but its very time consuming and very daunting.

[Theblacksheep]

ESXi 4.0 is free as you stated, code works, but to manage your machines in an easy fashion, you have to purchase vSphere, you could use the CLI to create, change, deploy machines, but you're going to have to read alot of documents to get what you want.

I dont think you need to purchase it to manage it in an easy fashion if you have only one esx box... You can create VMs etc and manage an ESX box just fine without vcenter etc.... vcenter only becomes usefull with 2 or more ESX boxes.

A single ESX box can be managed by vsphere client, web client or command line.

vSphere is licenced per CPU now too.

[ahuxham]

I dont think you need to purchase it to manage it in an easy fashion if you have only one esx box... You only really need to purchase it, when you have more than 1 IMHO.

Its licenced per CPU now tho.

Yes, per CPU at the exact costs I mentioned above, and there are only two ways, and I never mentioned vCenter, only vSphere, to completely different products for the job, nor did the OP mention it.

vSphere (irregardless of how many hosts you have. the more you have the more vCenter comes into play.)
CLI

ESXi doesn't have the same GUI on the host machine as ESX doe's so from a Host point of view apart from changing essential operating requirements the interface does nothing else.

[Theblacksheep]

vSphere (irregardless of how many hosts you have. the more you have the more vCenter comes into play.)CLI

web based management too

[ahuxham]

web based management too

So being able to view;

Data stores in this hosts inventory &
Browse managed objects by this host

Constitutes being able to manage the host via a web interface?

[m1ddy]

Seems to be some conflicting answers on this I guess I will just keep using vSphere until it ceases to work. Is there any way to view the vsphere license info? I can only see the ESX license info.

[DMcCoy]

vCenter server is not the same as the vSphere client that is used to manage a single host.

You do however use the same vSphere client to connect to a vCenter server.


If you are managing a single host, just browse to it's webpage and download and install the vSphere client. You can only connect to one host at a time and cannot perform actions such as vcb and vMotion. This is included with the ESXi free license and will not require any additional purchases.

[m1ddy]

You Legend DMcCoy. Thats exactly what I wanted to hear. We only have 1 ESXi host and all I want to do is manage it using vSphere. vCentre doesn't even come into the mix. I cant do vmotion etc anyway because I have activated the free ESXi license so it is no longer running in evaluation mode.

[DMcCoy]

My home ESX3i server recently expired it's trial license, unfortunately the license key was on my mail server, a VM.

You soon know if the license is not working as you can't start any VMs

I had to RDP from my Mac laptop into a server at work to get access to functioning email to get a license key for ESXi in the end!

[Theblacksheep]

So being able to view;

Data stores in this hosts inventory &
Browse managed objects by this host

Constitutes being able to manage the host via a web interface?

No, because thats not the 'vSphere Web Access', dont worry its not enabled by default. On your esx4 host run:

service vmware-webAccess start

you'll get a 'VMware server' view of the host where you can manage the VMs and view consoles by going to https://ip.ip.ip.ip/ui. You'll need to modify the service (chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on) if you want it to enable this 'full-er' web access on boot.



@DMcCoy: Mine at home done the same last week, i run of USB so I copied the network config to some local storage and just put a new version on the USB stick and new 2 months.

[somabc]

No, on your esx4 host run:

service vmware-webAccess start

you'll get a 'VMware server' view of the host where you can manage the VMs/data. You'll need to modify the service if you want it to enable this 'fuller' web access on boot.

WHAT!? Can you enable this from VSphere?

[Theblacksheep]

WHAT!? Can you enable this from VSphere?

Login to your ESX host CLI as admin, type that command and try it on a browser.... its not enabled by default. I put the command for enabling it on boot in the above post.

Hey, you can also give people URLs to specific VMs...