Datasheet

VSphere cOMpatibility guideS
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vSphere for Midsize and Enterprise Businesses
VMware provides the following vSphere editions for mid-size and enterprise businesses:
VMware vSphere Standard
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VMware vSphere Advanced •u
VMware vSphere Enterprise •u
VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus•u
These editions are tiered based on the vSphere features included. You can find the detailed com-
parison between these midsize and enterprise business editions at www.vmware.com/products/
vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html.
VMware vCenter Server is a required component for vSphere deployment and has to be pur-
chased separately for these midsize and enterprise editions of vSphere. vCenter Server is also
available in two editions:
VMware vCenter Server Foundation
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VMware vCenter Server Standard•u
The Foundation edition is limited to managing three vSphere hosts. The Standard edition
removes that limit and also adds support for vCenter Orchestrator and vCenter Linked Mode
features.
VMware provides a vSphere Purchase Advisor that can help you figure out the right edi-
TIP
tion of vSphere for your environment. The tool is available at www.vmware.com/products/
vsphere/purchase-advisor/.
vSphere Compatibility Guides
VMware maintains strict compatibility lists for its virtualization platform. This is one of the key
reasons why vSphere is rated as a mainframe-like, highly reliable, and resilient virtualization
platform. vSphere is certified across the complete stack of servers, storage, operating systems,
and software applications. VMware works closely with the various hardware providers to cer-
tify new hardware with vSphere. You can check the compatibility guides at www.vmware.com/
resources/compatibility. Because of ongoing certifications, these compatibility guides are
updated from time to time. You can leverage this information to plan and deploy hardware and
operating systems across the entire data center. The online compatibility guides allow you to
search for vSphere compatibility in the following categories:
Server systems
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Storage/SAN •u
I/O devices•u
Guest/host operating systems•u
VMware View-compatible devices•u
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