vSphere Desktop Edition and vCenter questions

[kfkernel]

Hi,

First of all i could not find a very appropiate forum to post this in. But hopefully this will do.

I am looking into the vSphere Desktop Edition and from what i can tell it is another type of license for ESXi, like vSphere Standard / Enterprise / Ent Plus etc. But it is limited to VDI deployments. So a vCenter license is not included in vSphere Desktop Edition, right?

But what confuses me is that if i understand the FAQ correctly i can not have ESXi Enterprise Plus hosts and ESXi Desktop Edition hosts managed within the same vCenter. Is this true?

If this is true. Do i have to deploy View Manager, View Composer etc in a separate vCenter environment? I can see that there are some cases where you want your VDI in a separate vCenter but in many cases sharing vCenter between VDI and Server Virtualization should be fine. You can still have them on different clusters in the vCenter.

Cheers

[Virtualinfra]

If i have understood your query correctly then below would be the answer.

Customer wants to run server and desktop VMs across the same ESX hosts.
• This is categorized as a “mixed environment”
• Customer must purchase all components ala carte (vSphere, vCenter, View Manager)

For Example:-

Scenario 1:-

You dont have any existing environment and you want to go with vmware view for desktop solution and vmware has offer of giving a bundle pack which comes with vpshere for desktop, vcenter for desktop and view manager.

Scenario 2:-

you have existing environment where you have server and desktops to be installed in the same host and manage using vmware view.

then you have to go for vSphere and vCenter license, then vmware view with view manager license.

Note :-

As the view bundle pack comes only with vsphere desktop license it cant be bundle with vmware vcenter standard license where we manage servers..

If you have vcenter standard license you can manage both desktops and server from 1 place.

Refer the below guide:-

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Pricing-Licensing-and-Upgrading-white-paper.pdf

[PduPreez]

Hi

If this is true. Do i have to deploy View Manager, View Composer etc in a separate vCenter environment?

This is not a requirement, but is best practice recommended by VMware

Please award points for helpful/correct responses

[kfkernel]

Hi,

Thank you for your replies. If i understand you correct it is possible to license my VDI hosts with vSphere Desktop licenses and connected them to my existing vCenter where i also have vSphere Enterprise hosts in a separate cluster? Even though the FAQ states the opposite, so the FAQ maybe should say "recommended" instead?

Q. Do I need a separate vCenter Server for my VDI hosts?

A. Yes, like VMware View Deployments on vSphere 4.x you will need a separate vCenter Server for your VDI hosts.

[Virtualinfra]

As updated in above post.

Yes, you can manage your vSphere desktop host with the existing vcenter with vsphere enterprise host, but that will be in a separate pool.

VMware says " We find that most customers separate their desktop virtualization and server virtualization deployments and typically use different instances of vCenter.  VMware recommends the use of different vCenter instances for Desktop Virtualization"

Its just a recommendation from Vmware to have a separate vCenter for desktops, but you can have them on One vCenter