Plain Virtualization

With the new SKU release in simplifying customer purchase, there are certain guideline in place in purchasing the different license SKU.  To help architects from partners and also end user, I have created this simple calculator for ease of sizing the license needed. Do note this is accurate at time of publishing and there might be changes. Here is the link to VMware License Calculator. Feel free to leave me any comments below. Update 13th Feb 2024 The minimum requirement for vSAN Add-on has been removed. There is no longer a 8TiB per CPU requirement as updated on KB .

You might not be aware as most customer do not have a datastore go beyond 2PB. Today we discover that if a datastore on vVOLs or vSAN which is more than 2PB, it will not be able to be use to create any workload. This is due to the PlaceVm API which limits it. You can refer to this kb . Though this will not affect many customers, VMware is committed to have this worked on perhaps to remove this limit. While that is at work, it is good to know and be aware when architecting.

Recently I got asked how many characters can a VM name character support and any special character can be used? Been doing vSphere since version 3.x, it has never encountered to me there was a limit in that space. Having said that, there is a case where a customer would need this. Example, to have the VM name similar to the FQDN especially true in a multi-domain or tenant environment where VM name could be the same and only the domain or tenant is the differentiator. So doing a quick check here is the below KBs that state the limit: As of vCenter Server 4.1, the number of characters for a VM name is 80. KB Display names for any objects e.g. VM Name, Datastore Name, etc. should not contain special characters like %, &, *, $, #, @, !, \, /, :, *, ?, ", <, >, |, ;, ' etc are contained in names of vSphere entities such as virtual machine name, cluster name, and datastore/folder/file name. However, '-' and '.' is apparently supported.  KB Here...

Recently there was some discussion over licensing in Facebook vExpert group . One of the users questioned about licensing 3 hosts, each placed at one location. He wants to be able to do a snapshot and monitor the health of the ESXi host. He intends to add a fourth host in future. He was also told by the account executive that vSphere Essential cannot meet this requirement. Let me explain some of the information which might be not clear enough. vSphere Essential and Essential Plus kit is a bundle that comes with vCenter Server Essential (which is not available for sale) and vSphere Essential/Essential Plus licensing. ]vCenter Server Essential can only manage up to three ESXi servers. The vSphere Essential kit allows you to license up to 3 hosts or 6 CPUs whichever come first. But you cannot license more than 3 hosts even if each only has 1 CPU. This is because vCenter Essential can only manage up to 3 ESXi hosts. Also, the licensing would not allow you to manage using a vCenter S...