6.5.1

Licensing for Products in vSphere
ESXi hosts, vCenter Server, and vSAN clusters are licensed dierently. To apply their licensing models
correctly, you must understand how the associated assets consume license capacity. You must also
understand how the evaluation period for each product works, what happens when a product license
expires, and so on.
Licensing for ESXi Hosts
ESXi hosts are licensed with vSphere licenses. Each vSphere license has a certain CPU capacity that you can
use to license multiple physical CPUs on ESXi hosts. When you assign a vSphere license to a host, the
amount of CPU capacity consumed equals the number of physical CPUs in the host. vSphere Desktop that is
intended for VDI environments is licensed on per virtual machine basis.
To license an ESXi host, you must assign it a vSphere license that meets the following prerequisites:
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The license must have sucient CPU capacity to license all physical CPUs on the host. For example, to
license two ESXi hosts that have four CPUs each, you need a vSphere license with a minimum capacity
of 8 CPUs to the hosts.
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The license must support all the features that the host uses. For example, if the host is associated with a
vSphere Distributed Switch, the license that you assign must support the vSphere Distributed Switch
feature.
If you aempt to assign a license that has insucient capacity or does not support the features that the host
uses, the license assignment fails.
You can assign and reassign the CPU capacity of a vSphere license to any combination of ESXi hosts. You
can assign a vSphere license for 10 CPUs to any of the following combinations of hosts:
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Five 2-CPU hosts
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Three 2-CPU hosts and one 4-CPU host
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Two 4-CPU hosts and one 2-CPU host
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One 8-CPU host and one 2-CPU host
Dual-core and quad-core CPUs, such as Intel CPUs that combine two or four independent CPUs on a single
chip, count as one CPU.
Evaluation Mode
When you install ESXi, its default license is evaluation mode. Evaluation mode licenses expire after 60 days.
An evaluation mode license provides the set of features that equals the highest vSphere product edition.
If you assign a license to an ESXi host before its evaluation period expires, the time available in the
evaluation period decreases by the time already used. To explore the entire set of features available for the
host, set it back to evaluation mode, and use it for the remaining evaluation period.
For example, if you use an ESXi host in evaluation mode for 20 days, then assign a vSphere Standard license
to the host, and then set the host back to evaluation mode, you can explore the entire set of features available
for the host for the remaining evaluation period of 40 days.
License and Evaluation Period Expiry
For ESXi hosts, license or evaluation period expiry leads to disconnection from vCenter Server. All powered
on virtual machines continue to work, but you cannot power on virtual machines after they are powered o.
You cannot change the current conguration of the features that are in use. You cannot use the features that
remained unused while the host was in evaluation mode.
vCenter Server and Host Management
84 VMware, Inc.