6/28/2019 0 Comments Esxi 6.7 LicenseOnce you have installed VMware ESXi onto a server, you’ll need to add your license key via the web interface. Otherwise, you’ll only be using the trial version, which lasts for 60 days. If you’re downloading the free version of ESXi, you can get the license key by visiting the evaluation page for ESXi. vSphere 6.7 Editions and LicensingVMware vSphere 6.7 licensing is based on physical CPU count of the hosts. Every edition requires Support and Subscription contract purchase. License key hasedition and quantity information encoded in it. These keys are not tied to aspecific hardware and can be assigned to multiple hosts, as long as the numberof CPUs are within licensed limit. vSpherecustomers with current contracts are entitled for version upgrades. vSphere isalso allowed to be downgraded to the previous versions. In vSphere 6.7 thereare three editions available:
Standard edition provides entry-level functionality, including features such as vMotion, storage vMotion, High Availability and Fault Tolerance. Enterprise Plus edition provides all features of Standard Edition and all advanced features with the exception of security protection available in Platinum edition. The change from editions available in vSphere 6.5 is addition of vSphere Platinum and removal of vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus. Table 1 providesdetailed comparison between various editions and the summary of differences isas per list below:
In addition tovSphere licenses, vCenter Server licenses are required for each instance. vCenterServer is available in 3 editions:
Table 1. vSphere 6.7 EditionsThere are alsopurpose-specific editions and packages:
Essentials and Essentials Plus packages include 6 CPUs licenses plus single vCenter Essentials license. These editions are suitable only for small environments and have feature restrictions as per Table 1. They also cannot scale past 6 CPUs and cannot be combined with any other editions in the same deployment. There are no licensing upgrade path to Standard or Enterprise Plus. ROBO (RemoteOffice Branch Office) packages are different from other vSphere editions, asthey are licensed per-VM with 25 VMs limit per remote office site. Explain new solutions offered in the current versionEvery version slightly increases scaling metrics, such as number of hosts and VMs per cluster, as well as CPUs and RAM. Table 2 shows different limits for different versions since 5.5.
Table 2. vSphere Version Scaling MetricsTable 3 shows introduction of some of the new features per release. For complete list of changes see this document (link). ![]()
Table 3. vSphere Version New Feature MatrixExplain ESXi and vCenter Server architecturesvSphere ESXi HypervisorESXi and vCenterServer are main components of Virtual Infrastructure Layer. Physical servers are running virtualization platform called ESXi. It is Type 1 or “bare metal” hypervisor, meaning that it is installed directly on the hardware. Type 2 hypervisors are called “hosted” and installed as a software on host operating system. VMware Workstation is an example of type 2 hypervisor. Because ESXi runs directly on the hardware, it must be supported by VMware. To check if the device is compatible with the specific version of ESXi use this link. You can install standalone ESXi hypervisor and run virtual machines on it. The hypervisor provides built-in management tools. The vSphere hypervisor can be installed with free of charge license. Without paid license, it provides only basic feature set. For example, it cannot be managed by vCenter and single VM can have only up to 8 Virtual CPUs. However, host’s CPU count and RAM size is not restricted. vCenter ServervCenter providesability to centrally manage multiple ESXi hosts, as pool of resources. As theresult you can statically or dynamically distribute load by placing virtualmachines on different hosts without any downtime. vCenter also enables manyother features not available when managing a single host, such as vMotion, DRSand VMware Distributed Switches. vCenter can beinstalled as a virtual Linux-based appliance or on top of Microsoft Windowsoperating system. Pre-requisite services required by vCenter are provided byVMware Platform Services Controller (PSC), which can be deployed separately orembedded into vCenter Server. Single PSC can service multiple vCenter serversin which case it must be installed separately. PSC ComponentsThe nextparagraphs list PSC’s components. All of them are included with PSC and cannotbe installed selectively. vCenter Single Sign-On performs authentication functions for users and vSphere components. It can use locally defined users and groups or external identity store, such as Active Directory. vSphere License Service responsible for centralized license management. Lookup Service provides the way for vSphere components to register and find each other. Certificate Authority performs certificate management and distribution to ESXi hosts. vCenter Server ComponentsvCenter has the following components, most of which also cannot be separately installed similar to PSC. vCenter Web Client (Flash-based) and vCenter Client (new, HTML5-based) are used to perform management tasks by connecting to vCenter Server using Web browser. Auto Deploy provides the way to rapidly provisioning ESXi hosts with ability to apply template configuration using host profiles. ESXi Dump Collector is used to gather diagnostic information over network during host failures. Syslog Collector provides ESXi hosts with ability to send their logs to centralized location. It is available as a separate component only on Windows. vCenter Appliance has OS built-in service called Rsyslog. vSphere Update Manager Extension – Update Manager is integrated with vCenter Server Appliance version 6.7 and can be optionally installed. vCenter Domains and SitesPSC can form anew vCenter Single Sign-On Domain or join existing one. If there is more thanone PSC in a domain, configuration replication happens between PSCs. ![]() By default,domain name is set to vsphere.local and it shouldn’t match the Microsoft ADdomain. You cannot move PSC or vCenter to another domain after initialinstallation. Sites is thelogical separation within a single domain of vCenter Servers and PSCs betweenmultiple sites. If you arefamiliar with Microsoft Active Directory, similar concepts are used to identifysingle authentication domain and logical sites to define different physicallocations, so authentication traffic stays within a single site for optimalperformance. vCenter and PSC Deployment OptionsEmbedded Platform Services Controller is the simplest deployment mode, where PSC coexists with vCenter within the same virtual machine (or physical server), as shown in Figure 2. The other option is to use standalone Platform Services Controller, which one or many vCenter Servers can connect to. The configuration supports mixing of vCenter Server on Windows and vCenter Appliances, as well as PSC deployed on Windows or an appliance. As PSC plays important role for vSphere infrastructure, it has to be highly available. VMware recommends deployment of at least two joined Platform Services Controllers in a single domain. However, vCenter Server can be pointed only to a single PSC at a time and to provide automatic failover external load balancer deployment is required. Alternatively, manual failover option is available which involves reconfiguration of vCenter during PSC failure. vCenter Enhanced Linked ModeUsing thisfeature, group of vCenter servers or appliances can be managed by log in to anyof the members. This mode of operation must be enabled during the installationof vCenter Server or Appliance. With vSphere 6.5 Update 2, it is possible to group together embedded vCenter Appliances. At the time of writing embedded vCenter Server on Windows is not supported. This setup satisfies high availability requirements without use of load balancers. What other Data Center solutions interact with vSphere?PhysicalInfrastructure LayervSphereinteracts and runs on top of the compute, storage and network resources.Physical solutions are vendor-specific. VirtualInfrastructure LayervSphere performsserver virtualization. Desktop virtualization is function of VMware Horizon. VMware NSX DataCenter provides network and security virtualization. VMware vSAN is SSD-optimized hyper-converged solution that allows to share localstorage of each of the hosts. OperationsManagement LayerThe solutionsand products on this layer are responsible for operational tasks, such asmonitoring, logging and patch management. vRealizeOperations Manager and vRealize Log Insight cover monitoringand logging functionality. vSphere UpdateManager upgrades and patches ESXi hosts and ensures thatVMware Tools are up-to-date on virtual machines. vRealize SuiteLifecycle Manager automates deployment and upgrade of vRealizeSuite. Cloud ManagementLayervRealizeAutomation is used to create VM templates which areconsumed via Cloud Management Platform (CMP) portal. vRealize Business forCloud provides reports and analytics of virtual infrastructure costs. Data Protectionand Backup LayerData Protection is a disk-based backup solution powered by EMC and integrated with VMWare VCenter. VADP (VMwarevSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection) providesinterface for 3rd party backup solutions. Disaster recovery is based on SiteRecovery Manager and vSphere Replication.
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