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EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5

You’ve already seen how VMware packages and licenses VMware vCenter Server, but here’s

a quick review:

u VMware vCenter Server for Essentials kits, which is bundled with the vSphere Essentials

kits (more on the kits in just a moment).

u VMware vCenter Server Foundation supports the management of up to three vSphere

hosts.

u VMware vCenter Server Standard, which includes all functionality and does not have a

preset limit on the number of vSphere hosts it can manage (although normal sizing limits

do apply). vCenter Orchestrator is only included in the Standard edition of vCenter Server.

In addition to the three editions of vCenter Server, VMware also offers three editions of

VMware vSphere:

u vSphere Standard Edition

u vSphere Enterprise Edition

u vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition

No More vSphere Advanced

If you were familiar with the editions of VMware vSphere 4, you’ll note that the Advanced Edition no

longer exists in vSphere 5. Users who purchased Advanced Edition are entitled to use the Enterprise

Edition in vSphere 5.

These three editions are differentiated by two things: the features each edition supports and

the vRAM entitlement. Before I get to the features supported by each edition, I’d like to ﬁ rst

discuss vRAM entitlements.

Starting with vSphere 5.0, VMware now uses vRAM entitlements as a part of the licensing

scheme. Prior to vSphere 5, VMware’s licensing was per-processor but included restrictions on

the number of physical cores and the amount of the physical RAM in the server. For example,

the Enterprise Edition of VMware vSphere 4 limited users to 6 cores per CPU socket and a

maximum of 256GB of RAM in the server. The idea of limits on physical CPU cores and physical

RAM goes away in vSphere 5. Servers licensed with VMware vSphere 5 can have as many cores

per CPU socket and as much physical memory installed as the user would like. The licensing is

still per-processor, but instead of using CPU core or memory limits, VMware has introduced the

concept of vRAM entitlements.

vRAM is the term used to describe the amount of RAM conﬁ gured for a VM. For example,

a VM conﬁ gured to use 8 GB of RAM is conﬁ gured for 8 GB of vRAM. (You’ll see more on how

to conﬁ gure VMs and memory assigned to VMs in Chapter 9.) In vSphere 5, each edition has an

associated vRAM entitlement—a soft limit on the amount of vRAM conﬁ gured for your VMs—

associated with the license. Here are the vRAM entitlements for the different editions:

u vSphere Standard Edition: vRAM entitlement of 32 GB

u vSphere Enterprise Edition: vRAM entitlement of 64 GB

u vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition: vRAM entitlement of 96 GB

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