ESXi4 vs ESXi3.5 License question

[neontangerine]

I have been running ESXi3.5 on a 2 processor Quad Xeon (8 total cores) with 24GB RAM and a 500GB raid 5 array for a while now and just yesterday found ESXi4 but am concerned that this may not work for me.

It looks like the new license is limited to 1 CPU with up to 6 cores so this means that is no longer a good fit for this equiment.

I was unable to find much in details since ESXi4 is very new and many

of the document links still pull up ESXi3.5 versions of the docs.

It looks like if I want to fully leverage this equipment I now need to purchase a license, is this correct or is there something I am missing?

If I need to lices is it still possible to mix purchased and free licences (I have a couple of Xeon dual core machines also)?

Any assistance in helping me understand this new change in the license would be appreciated.

[TomHowarth]

ESX licensing has changed now instead of being charged per two sockets it is charged per single socket. so what the 6 core limit actualy means is the you can utilize upto hex-core chips. to be licensed for ESX4 you will need to purchase 2 processor licenses. this will give you upto 12 cores unless you go for the Enterprise plus or Advanced options which are licensed for 12 cores (therefore 24 core per dual processor machine)

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[DSTAVERT]

If you are using the Free version then there is no change. You can use what you have assuming it is on the HCL. Check the HCL very carefully before you make the move. It has stiffer requirements and some classes of hardware are no longer supported. Your hardware must have hardware virtualization support and a supported 64bit processor for running 64bit Guest OSs.