Iwas reading deep into this topic as I was preparing for my VCP exams. Typically, post sales team do not need to memorise this by hard. However, there would be times when project team needs to cross check certain use cases required by the customer with their purchased license entitlement.
At the time of writing (16th Sept 2018), VMware vSphere licenses are categorised as below:
1. For smaller Environments (licenses base on 3 physical servers, each server up to 2 CPU sockets)
- VMware Essential
- VMware Essential Plus
2. For larger Enterprises (licenses based on per CPU)
- VMware vSphere Standard
- VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus
- VMware vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus
3. Enterprise with remote site server virtualization with business continuity (licenses based on per pack of 25 VMs)
- VMware vSphere Remote Office Branch Office (Robo) Standard
- VMware vSphere Remote Office Branch Office (Robo) Advanced
The full comprehensive comparison can be found on VMware KB articles:
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/vsphere/vmw-flyr-comparevsphereeditions-uslet.pdf
https://www.vmware.com/sg/products/vsphere.html
Elaborating alittle on some of the key differences for the more commonly used vSphere Standard and vSphere Enterprise Plus on a 'one pager'.
My Conclusion (vSphere Standard vs vSphere Enterprise)
Almost all of the client projects which I have been doing over the past 3 years have purchased vSphere Enterprise licenses. I would say the biggest difference and most commonly used vSphere Enterprise features are 'vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)' and 'vSphere Distributed Switch'. DRS enable you to rebalance your cluster so the hosts are utilized evenly. When there is a uneven utilization of resources, it will invoke vMotion to migrate VMs to maintain cluster balance. 'vSphere Distributed Switch' enable you to centrally manage and deploy the configuration of logical switches. Other useful features would include 'Storage and Network I/O control' and 'VM encryption'.
"What do you think?"
Let me know if you think there is any important/useful details I have missed in the above write up.
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