5.5 licenses coexisting with 4.1 licenses

[scoutt42]

We are in the process of upgrading our VM infrastructure to 5.5 and was curious if all of our 5.5 licenses can coexists with our previous 4.1 until we get all the ESX servers upgraded. What I mean is if I add a 5.5 license will it overwrite or change the 4.1 licensing for the hosts? so we can add 5.5 hosts without worrying about licensing on the old stuff.

[rcporto]

Once you upgrade your vCenter to version 5.5 you can have both licenses versions (4 and 5) added in vCenter license management without problems, the old hosts will continue using the 4.x licenses and the new hosts can be assigned with new 5.x licenses.

[scoutt42]

Thanks for your reply, how sure of this are we? lol I can't find anything that states either way and I don't want to assume if you know what I mean.

[rcporto]

I'm 100% sure of this (I have a lot of customers in this scenario), even I don't believe that VMware will require that a mixed environment with hosts on versions 5.x and 4.x the license administration for 4.x need to be directly on host.

On the following link you can see that we can even manage ESXi 3.5 licenses using the License Server: Managing Licenses on ESX/ESXi 3.5 Hosts

[scoutt42]

Thanks Richardson