Plain Virtualization

Awhile a go I wrote an article about how the different vSphere Desktop licensing is for and the entitlement. Having meeting many customer with big and small environment, projects or used cases for certain requirements.  There were some question revolving around vCenter licensing especially for the desktop related. Here is an article of the FAQ on vSphere Desktop licensing.  One of the question in this article states: Q. Do I need a separate vCenter Server for my VDI hosts?  A. Yes, like Horizon 7 deployments on vSphere 5.x, you will need a separate VMware vCenter Server® for your VDI hosts. vCenter is not included in vSphere Desktop.  Let me further explain the above.  If you are running a 3rd party VDI solution riding on vSphere Desktop licensing, vCenter is not included.  You would need to purchase vCenter Standard to manage that environment. However if you are a Horizon customer, the bundle include vCenter Desktop use to manage a vSphere Des...

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...

Was asked by few customers confused on Site Recovery Manager (SRM) compatibility with vSphere Essential Plus.  And I thought I do make a explanation to clear this confusion which I was able to find the documents stating it.  Also refer to my previous post on vCenter Editions to understand the different editions of vCenter. First and foremost,  the current release of SRM at the time of writing is 5.1.1.  SRM must work with same version of vCenter.  So if your vCenter is 5.0, you can only run SRM 5.0.  In order to run SRM 5.1, you need to upgrade only your vCenter to 5.1 while vSphere can remain any version that is supported by vCenter 5.1.  In this case, vSphere 4.x and above.  You can check out the interoperability using the site here .  Here is an example: Next, we know that SRM 5.1 support vSphere Essential Plus.  That is true however if you are using a lower version of SRM, vSphere Essential Plus is not supported.  ONLY ...

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...