VMware

VMware vSphere™

Compare vSphere 5.0 Editions

Choose your vSphere 5.0 Edition to meet your specific business and IT objectives. vSphere Editions are licensed on a per CPU basis and must be used in conjunction with vCenter Server.

	Standard	Enterprise	Enterprise Plus
Overview	Server consolidation and no planned downtime	Powerful & efficient resource management	Policy-based datacenter automation
Product Components
Processor Entitlement License is required per physical processor.	Per 1 CPU	Per 1 CPU	Per 1 CPU
vRAM Entitlement Amount of vRAM that each license adds to the available pool. vRAM is the amount of virtual memory configured to a virtual machine. See vSphere 5.0 Pricing and Packaging White Paper for more information about vRAM.	32GB	64GB	96GB
vCPU Entitlement The number of virtual CPUs that may be allocated to each VM when using virtual symmetric multiprocessing (vSMP)	8-way	8-way	32-way
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware Qualified purchases of VMware vSphere entitle to free use of enterprise Linux (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware) as guest OS. This offer includes free subscription to patches & updates of the OS and ability to run unlimited number of virtual machines per vSphere license. For more information about Terms and Conditions use the link at the bottom of this page.
Centralized Management Compatibility
vCenter Server (Sold Separately) vCenter Server – Provides management for vSphere deployments and is available in two editions: vCenter Standard: Provides large scale management of VMware vSphere deployments for rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration, and control of virtual machines (up to 1000 vSphere hosts). vCenter Foundation: Provides powerful management tools for smaller environments (up to 3 vSphere hosts) looking to rapidly provision, monitor, and control virtual machines.	vCenter Server Foundation vCenter Server Standard	vCenter Server Foundation vCenter Server Standard	vCenter Server Foundation vCenter Server Standard
Product Features
Thin Provisioning Reduce storage needs by utilizing dynamic storage that expands to meet the requirements of the virtual machine with no performance degradation.
Update Manager Reduce time spent on routine remediation by automating the tracking, patching and updating of your vSphere hosts, as well as the VM's applications and operating systems.
Data Recovery Protect your data through fast agent-less backups to disk, with de-duplication to minimize use of backup disk space.
High Availability Minimize downtime with automated restart of your VMs following physical machine failure.
vMotion Eliminate application downtime from planned server maintenance by migrating running VMs between hosts.
Storage APIs for Data Protection Achieve scalable backup without disrupting applications or users by leveraging supported 3rd party backup software that leverage these APIs.
Virtual Serial Port Concentrator Connect over the network via the serial port concentrator to the serial port console on any server.
Hot Add Increase capacity by adding CPU, memory, or devices to virtual machines when needed without disruption or downtime.
vShield Zones Simplify security management by configuring and maintaining your multiple zones of security within software among shared hosts rather than across separate siloed physical environments.
Fault Tolerance Provide continuous availability for applications with zero data loss in the event of server failures.
Storage APIs for Array Integration Improve performance and scalability by leveraging efficient array-based operations.
Storage APIs for Multipathing Improve performance and reliability of IO from vSphere to storage by leveraging third party storage vendor multi-path software capabilities.
Storage vMotion Avoid application downtime for planned storage maintenance by migrating live VM disk files across storage arrays.
Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS), Distributed Power Management (DPM) Align resources usage with business priority by automatically load balancing across hosts and optimize power consumption by turning off hosts during lower load periods.
Storage I/O Control Prioritizes storage access by continuously monitoring I/O load of a storage volume and dynamically allocating available I/O resources to virtual machines according to business needs.
Network I/O Control Prioritizes network access by continuously monitoring I/O load over the network and dynamically allocating available I/O resources to specific flows according to business needs.
Distributed Switch Centralize provisioning, administration, and monitoring using cluster-level network aggregation.
Host Profiles Simplify host deployment and compliance by creating VMs from configuration templates.
Auto Deploy Deploy more vSphere hosts in minutes and "on the fly".
Storage DRS Automated load balancing now looks at storage characteristics to determine the best place for a given virtual machine’s data to live when it is created and then used over time.
Profile-Driven Storage Reduce the steps in the selection of storage resources by grouping storage according to a user-defined policy.