{"id":1730,"date":"2021-10-13T09:27:04","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T13:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2022-12-12T11:44:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T16:44:32","slug":"vmware-esxi-free-edition-licensing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"VmWare ESXi Free Edition Licensing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The List of Limitations for Free VMware ESXi<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now let\u2019s have a closer look at restrictions when using an ESXi server version 6.7 with a free license. Depending on your environment, some restrictions may be unnoticeable for you while others can be critical:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>No Official VMware Support<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Max 8 vCPU per Each VM<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Cannot Be Managed with vCenter<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>vStorage API Is Not Available<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>No Official VMware Support<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is no commercial technical support provided by VMware for free ESXi. You can ask the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/communities.vmware.com\/t5\/VMTN-Discussions\/bd-p\/501\">VMware community<\/a>&nbsp;for support, and with any luck, you can find a solution for resolving your issue. While commercial VMware technical support works 24&#215;7 and usually provides answers in short order, help in resolving issues by the VMware community may take somewhat more time. VMware commercial support also provides software upgrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Max 8 vCPU per Each VM<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you create a VM with more than 8 virtual processors (for example, a VM with 9 virtual one-core processors or a VM with 5 virtual two-core processors), the VM is likely to fail to start on free ESXi, showing the error \u201cThere are insufficient licenses to complete this operation\u201d. At the same time, with the Evaluation or Enterprise Plus editions you can create a VM with up to 128 vCPUs (virtual Central Processors Units) assigned to that VM. The 8 vCPU restriction may not cause significant disadvantages, unlike the following two restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Cannot Be Managed with vCenter<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The free version of an ESXi server cannot be managed with vCenter \u2013 a centralized server for managing hosts and virtual machines. If you try to add an ESXi host with a free license to vCenter Server, you can expect to get the error: \u201cLicense not available to perform the operation\u201d. Hence, you cannot migrate machines from one free ESXi host to another as well as use&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nakivo.com\/blog\/configuring-vmware-esxi-cluster\/\">clustering<\/a>&nbsp;features, because vCenter Server is required to perform these operations. This is a significant disadvantage if you are planning to use multiple ESXi hosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>vStorage API Is Not Available<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">VMware provides a data protection framework that is called vStorage API (Application Program Interface) for enabling centralized backup of virtual machines on a host level. vStorage APIs allows third-party&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nakivo.com\/vmware-backup\/\">VMware backup solutions<\/a>&nbsp;to make backup more efficiently as well as offload CPU, network, and storage. ESXi Server Free Edition doesn\u2019t allow applications to interact with that ESXi server via vStorage APIs, hence, VMs cannot be backed up from the free version of ESXi on a host level. Your backup application should display an error message in this case. You can only perform a legacy backup of VMs running on the free version of ESXi host that requires the agent installation on the guest operating system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">VmWare burries this link pretty deep<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ESXi 6.x<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/customerconnect.vmware.com\/en\/group\/vmware\/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6\">https:\/\/customerconnect.vmware.com\/en\/group\/vmware\/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">kb article<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kb.vmware.com\/s\/article\/2107518\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/kb.vmware.com\/s\/article\/2107518<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The List of Limitations for Free VMware ESXi Now let\u2019s have a closer look at restrictions when using an ESXi server version 6.7 with a free license. Depending on your&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[184,124],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-esx","tag-vmware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2319,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/increasec.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}