Plain Virtualization

With vSAN 6.2, the support for ROBO site been introduced.  There have been lots of questions regarding how do we license the witness in a more effective manner.  Some of the thought in using vSphere ROBO licenses, vSphere Essentials licenses, and even free ESXi hypervisor. Here this article is to explain the do-able methods that have not been very clear.  Before we start, check out the vSAN 6.5 Licensing Guide . First of all the common way to place the vSAN Witness are normally in a vSphere cluster.  So this cluster is already licensed.  It doesn't matter if its the lowest Essential Edition to Enterprise Plus Edition.  So if you like to run this even using a vSphere ROBO license, this can be done since ROBO is meant for a small site, not more than 25 VMs.  Do take note that, using vSphere ROBO, you will not be able to power on more than 25 VMs (assuming your license is 25VMs pack and has not been divided).  You cannot combine the license. ...

This brought to my attention thanks to my colleague, Tessa Davis . Previously I mentioned on the different editions of vCenter here .  I did mentioned about the limitation of vCenter Standard and Foundation used to manage Essential and Essential is not possible due to End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).  However starting from vCenter 5.0 Update 1, this EULA enforcement is also a programmatic enforcement.  If you refer to vCenter 5.0 Update 1 release notes here , you will see the below: vCenter now enforces restrictions on which vSphere editions can be managed by vCenter With this feature, vCenter Standard and Foundation is disallowed from managing vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus host editions. This is disallowed per the EULA already, but was not programmatically enforced until now. The exception to this rule is the ‘Essentials for ROBO’ edition. This is still allowed per the EULA and as per the programmatic enforcement. Furthermore, it is also enfo...

Have met some customer who are tight on budget and is on Essentials or Essentials Plus. There are some confusion with the packaging of the vCenter editions and I would like to clarify some of this with some of the links around VMware sites for easy understanding. Essentials or Essentials Plus are bundled with vCenter Essentials while vSphere Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus is often quote with vCenter Standard. So what does this mean?  With the different vCenter Edition, there are some hard limitations.  If you refer to my vRAM entitlement post here , I have mentioned that there is a hard 192GB vRAM entitlement and limit to 3 hosts to one vCenter for Essentials and Essentials Plus.   vCenter Essentials bundled ONLY in vSphere Essentials or vSphere Essentials Plus kit is limited to manage hosts up to 6 CPUs or 3 hosts whichever comes first.  This is due to the limitations from this vCenter edition. Also with vCenter Essentials, there is no linked mod...