VMware vSphere 7 Essentials Plus Kit
VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Kit provides an all-in-one solution for small businesses to virtualize their physical servers and reduce hardware costs while ensuring superior high application availability and data protection.
What’s Included
This kit includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials Plus (for 3 servers with up to 2 processors each) and 1 license for vCenter Server Essentials.
The vSphere Essentials Plus Kit consists of the following:
- vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi)
- vCenter Server Essentials
- vSphere Data Protection
- vSphere High Availability (HA)
- vSphere vMotion
- Cross Switch vMotion
- vSphere vShield Endpoint
- vSphere Replication
Benefits
- Provide business continuity and always-available IT
- Improve service levels and application quality
- Reduce IT footprint and simplify management
- Strengthen security and data protection
- Save on IT hardware costs
Understanding VMware vSphere 7 Editions and Features
vSphere 7 licenses are delivered as license keys, which are made up of 25-character alphanumeric strings. When purchasing a license, you can choose between the Basic Support or the Production Support options. Different license editions are,
vSphere Main Editions
- vSphere Standard – Provides the basic features for server consolidation. A support and subscription contract (SnS) is mandatory when purchasing the vSphere Standard
- vSphere Enterprise Plus – Provides the full range of vSphere features. A support and subscription contract (SnS) is mandatory when purchasing the Enterprise plus editions.
- vSphere Essentials kit – The essentials kit is an all in one solution for small environments with up to 3 hosts (2 CPUs on each host). Support is optional when purchasing the essentials kit and is available on a per-incident basis.
- vSphere Essentials Plus kit – This is similar to the Essentials kit and provides additional features such as vSphere vMotion, vSphere HA, and vSphere replication. A support and subscription contract (SnS) is sold separately, and a minimum of one year of SnS is required.
Features | vSphere Standard | vSphere Enterprise Plus | vSphere Essentials | vSphere Essentials Plus |
vSphere Hypervisor | • | • | • | • |
vSphere vMotion® | • | • | • | |
VMware vCenter® Hybrid Linked Mode | vCenter Server Standard™ | vCenter Server Standard | ||
vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) | • | • | ||
vSphere High Availability (HA) | • | • | • | |
vSphere Storage vMotion® | • | • | ||
vSphere Fault Tolerance | 2-vCPU | 8-vCPU | ||
VMware vShield Endpoint™ | • | • | • | |
vSphere Replication™ | • | • | • | |
Support for 4K native storage | • | • | ||
vSphere Quick Boot™ | • | • | • | |
vCenter High Availability | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server for Essentials | vCenter Server for Essentials |
vCenter Backup and Restore | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server for Essentials | vCenter Server for Essentials |
vCenter Server Appliance™ Migration | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server Standard | vCenter Server for Essentials | vCenter Server for Essentials |
TPM 2.0 support and virtual TPM | • | • | ||
FIPS 140-2 compliance and TLS 1.2 support | • | • | • | |
VM encryption | • | |||
Support for Microsoft virtualization-based security (VBS) | • | • | • | |
Per-VM Enhanced vMotion Compatibility | • | • | ||
VMware Instant Clone | • | • | ||
Identity federation with Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) | • | • | ||
vSphere Trust Authority™ | • | |||
Content Library | • | • | ||
APIs for storage awareness | • | • | ||
Storage APIs for array integration and multipathing | • | • | ||
vSphere Virtual Volumes™ | • | • | ||
Storage policy-based management | • | • | ||
Next-generation infrastructure image management | • | • | ||
vSphere Distributed Switch™ | • | |||
Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy™ | • | |||
vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS) and vSphere Distributed Power Management™ (DPM) – | • | |||
vSphere Storage DRS™ | • | |||
vSphere Network I/O Control and vSphere Storage I/O Control | • | |||
Single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support | • | |||
vSphere Persistent Memory™ | • | |||
NVIDIA GRID vGPU | • | |||
Proactive HA | • | |||
Predictive DRS | • | |||
Accelerated graphics for VMs | • | |||
Dynamic vSphere DirectPath I/O™ | • | |||
vCenter Server Profile | vCenter Server Standard | |||
vCenter Server update planner | • |
VMware vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Editions
VMware vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Editions are designed for an IT infrastructure located in remote/distributed sites. These editions include 25 VM licenses of vSphere Remote Office Branch Office. The following table shows the different options available for Remote Office Branch Office Editions.
Features | vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Standard
|
vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Enterprise | vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Advanced
|
vSphere Hypervisor | • | • | • |
vSphere vMotion | • | • | • |
vSphere Virtual SMP | • | • | • |
vSphere HA | • | • | • |
vSphere Storage vMotion | • | • | • |
vSphere Fault Tolerance | 2-vCPU | 4-vCPU | 4-vCPU |
vShield Endpoint | • | • | • |
vSphere Replication | • | • | • |
vSphere Quick Boot | • | • | • |
vCenter High Availability | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation |
vCenter Backup and Restore | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation |
vCenter Server Appliance Migration | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation | vCenter Server Foundation |
FIPS 140-2 compliance and TLS 1.2 support | • | • | • |
Support for Microsoft VBS | • | • | • |
Identity federation with ADFS | • | • | • |
Content Library | • | • | • |
APIs for storage awareness | • | • | • |
vSphere Virtual Volumes | • | • | • |
Storage policy-based management | • | • | • |
Next-generation infrastructure image management | • | • | • |
Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy | • | • | |
vSphere Distributed Switch | • | • | |
Limited DRS (maintenance mode only) | • | ||
VM encryption | • | ||
Storage APIs for array integration and multipathing | |||
vSphere Network I/O Control and vSphere Storage I/O Control) | |||
SR-IOV support |
vSphere add-on for Kubernetes feature
New in vSphere 7 when enabled on your ESXi host, it allows you to use Kubernetes on your vSphere cluster. A cluster that is enabled for vSphere with Kubernetes is called a Supervisor Cluster. To enable this on your cluster, assign a VMware vSphere 7 Enterprise Plus with Add-on for Kubernetes license to all ESXi hosts that you want to use as part of a Supervisor Cluster. Below are the features provided by the vSphere add-on for the Kubernetes feature.
vSphere add-on for Kubernetes feature |
DESCRIPTION |
Application-focused Management | Enables VI admins to organize multiple objects into a logical group and then apply policies to the entire group |
VMware Tanzu™ Kubernetes Grid™ service for vSphere | Allows developers to manage consistent, compliant and conformant Kubernetes clusters |
vSphere Pod service | Allows developers to run containers without managing VMs or Kubernetes clusters |
Storage service | Allows developers to manage persistent disks for use with containers, Kubernetes and VMs |
Network service | Allows developers to manage virtual routers, load balancers and firewall rules |
Registry service | Allows developers to store, manage and secure Docker and OCI images |
vCenter Server editions
vCenter Server provides centralized, unified management for the objects in vSphere environments like hosts and VMs. It is a requirement for a complete vSphere deployment. One instance of vCenter Server. vCenter Server is available in the following packages:
- vCenter Server for Essentials – Management for vSphere Essentials Kits.
- vCenter Server Foundation – Provides management for smaller environments looking to rapidly provision, monitor, and control VMs.
- vCenter Server Standard – Highly scalable management with rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration, and control of all VMs in a vSphere environment. vCenter
vCenter Server Essentials |
vCenter Server Foundation |
vCenter Server Standard |
|
Number of hosts | Up to 3 | Up to 4 | Unlimited |
vSphere licenses managed | vSphere Essentials and vSphere Essentials Plus | vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus and VMware vCloud Suite® | vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus and vCloud Suite |
After knowing different vSphere 7 editions and features, it will be helpful for companies to purchase right edition of vSphere based on the company’s requirements.