Frequently Asked Questions
vSphere+ is a new subscription offering consisting of both on-premises and cloud components interacting with each other. On-premises components include cloud gateways, vCenter instances, and ESXi hosts. Cloud components include various cloud services for admins (or IT operations) and developers (or DevOps).
Cloud gateways connect your vCenter instances to the VMware Cloud Console, where you can centrally manage on-premises infrastructure and access cloud services.
Yes. vSphere+ is precision-engineered to provide a simple, non-disruptive upgrade for customers already using vSphere. Existing vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus licenses can be easily converted to subscription. Contact your VMware partner or sales representative to start your upgrade to vSphere+.
vSphere+ includes cloud services that are delivered as a service. Your vCenter instances and ESXi hosts remain on-premises.
Please contact your VMware partner or sales representative to try vSphere+ for free in your environment.
Getting started with vSphere+ is easy. Once you subscribe, you will receive an onboarding email from VMware with setup instructions, and the process takes about an hour.
Yes, vSphere+ supports ESXi version 6.7 or later. vCenter instances need to be updated to the latest version.
There are no special hardware requirements for vSphere+ beyond the basic vSphere requirements.
With vSphere+ you can:
- Access cloud services delivered as-a-Service (SaaS)
- Centralize management with a cloud console
- Create an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment at no additional charge
- Purchase by subscription
See this link for enhancements in vSphere+
vSphere+ supports traditional workloads based on VMs, plus modern workloads based on containers. There is no difference between vSphere+ and vSphere in the types of workloads supported.
VMware is developing vSphere+ add-on services to expedite disaster recovery, ransomware protection, capacity planning, and more. For a list of add-on services currently available for purchase or in development, contact your VMware partner or sales representative.
vSphere+ includes extensive developer services, including VM service, Storage service, Network service, Registry service, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service, Tanzu integrated services, Tanzu Mission-Control Essentials, and more. These services are included with vSphere+ at no additional charge.
vSphere+ includes extensive admin services, including Global Inventory service, Event View service, Security Health Check service, VM Provisioning service, Lifecycle Management service, Configuration Management service, and more. These services are included with vSphere+ at no additional charge.
The gateway uses industry-standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) to protect network connections and does not copy or share proprietary data to the cloud. The gateway allows VMware to securely initiate maintenance and support operations, by applying traditional security concepts like privilege separation and least privilege.
No. Everything continues to run on-premises on ESXi hosts. vSphere+ allows you to centrally manage your on-premises environment from a cloud console and to enhance management with cloud services.
If you lose your connection to the cloud, only access to cloud services and the cloud console will be affected. vCenter instances, ESXi hosts, and workloads will continue to run normally and can be managed from vCenter (through the vSphere client).
The only additional tool needed to unlock vSphere+ benefits is the VMware Cloud Console, accessible through a web browser.
VMware Cloud Console can be reached at https://vmc.vmware.com. Once logged in, you can review and subscribe to available VMware services, including vSphere+.
If you choose to migrate on-premises workloads to the cloud, vSphere+ will make this easier. You can move workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS using the hybrid linked mode capability built into the vSphere+ cloud gateway.
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