Hi,
I'm investigating the upgrade options for a customer. They currently have an Essentials license with 2 hosts that they use for their Lab and testing environment . Now they are due a hardware refresh and want to p2v all their old physical servers. They need linked mode for DR so Essentials is not an option nd they are looking at 2 vCenter licenses with 4 x vCenter standard license - new hosts.
Can they retain the use of their existing Essentials environment connected to it's own vCenter from a licensing point of view if it is completely seperate?
Or do they also have to upgrade the Essentials hosts to a Standard license ? (or most likely scrap these if that is the case)
Thanks.
If your old hosts will not be added to the new vCenter, you can let them managed by the old vCenter Essentials without problem.
Unfortunately you will need to buy vSphere Standard to your hosts since the vCenter Standard cannot manage hosts with vSphere Essentials licenses.
Thansk for the reply.
They wouldn't need the lab environment connected to the vCenter standard though; they don't need vMotion or any of the advanced features. Can the Essentials hosts continue to be connected to the essentials vCenter ? Technically I know that it would work but unclear on the licensing aspect.
If your old hosts will not be added to the new vCenter, you can let them managed by the old vCenter Essentials without problem.
Great, so they don't lose the use of the existing license. I wish VMware's documentation was clearer on these things!
Thanks for you help.