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VMware licensing options

VMware licensing options

VMware® administrators can quickly realize cost-effective hybrid cloud characteristics by deploying into an IBM Cloud® enterprise-grade global cloud. A key differentiator is that vSphere workloads and catalogs can be provisioned onto VMware vSphere environments within IBM Cloud® data centers without modifying VMware VMs or guests. These deployments are made possible by using a common vSphere hypervisor and management or orchestration platform.

In addition to offering the vSphere Enterprise Plus license, IBM Cloud® offers monthly licensing for vCenter, NSX, vRealize, vSAN, and Site Recovery Manager (SRM).

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere is a bare metal virtualization OS platform that abstracts processor, memory, storage, and networking resources to create multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. Multiple physical servers can be clustered together to create a private cloud.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware vSphere.

  • vCenter Clients
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

VMware vSphere features

VMware vSphere offers the following features.

  • vMotion live migration
  • High availability
  • Fault tolerance
  • Replication
  • Nvidia GRID vGPU virtualization
  • Workload capacity optimization
  • Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS)
  • Thin provisioning
  • Network I/O control

VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter helps you centralize the management of the compute resources within each vSphere host. You can manage vSphere hosts individually, but placing them under the vCenter control enables the following capabilities.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware vCenter.

  • Web Client
  • Thick Client
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

VMware vCenter features

VMware vCenter offers the following features.

  • Centralized control and visibility for all aspects within managed vSphere hosts and guest virtual machines.
  • Provides a window interface view through the vCenter web client for compute network and storage management.
  • Proactive Optimization. Enables allocation and optimization of resources for maximum efficiency across the vSphere hosts.
  • Extended management function for other integrated add-ons and services such as NSX, vRealize, vSAN, and Site Recovery Manager (SRM).
  • Monitoring, alerting, scheduling. Cloud admins can view events, alerts within the vCenter web client and configure scheduled actions.
  • Automation engine. vCenter is the engine that performs the tasks that are given to it through the vSphere API web interface. VMware vRealize Automation and vRealize Orchestration are examples of applications that drive vCenter actions through the VMware API.

VMware NSX

VMware NSX offers Software-Defined Network (SDN) capabilities that are crucial to support cloud platform operations.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware NSX.

  • vCenter Clients
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

VMware NSX features

VMware NSX offers the following features.

  • Load balancing
  • Firewalls
  • Routing
  • Logical switches
  • VPN
  • VxLAN segmentation and tunnel endpoints

VMware vRealize

The VMware vRealize Suite is an enterprise-ready, cloud management platform that you can use to manage a heterogeneous, hybrid cloud.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware vRealize.

  • vCenter Clients
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

The license model for vRealize is per processor per month.

VMware vRealize features

VMware vRealize offers the following features.

  • vRealize Automation - Automated delivery of personalized infrastructure, applications, and custom IT services.
  • vRealize Operations - Intelligent health, performance, capacity, and configuration management orchestration.
  • vRealize Log Insight - Real-time log management and log analysis.
  • vRealize Network Insight - Accelerated security management for applications and network infrastructures.

VMware vSAN

VMware vSAN enables local storage drives on each vSphere host to be aggregated and pooled into a shared-nothing storage device that is accessible to all hosts in a vSAN cluster.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware vSAN.

  • vCenter Clients
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

VMware vSAN features

VMware vSAN offers the following features.

  • Distributed host-based storage
  • Shared-nothing architecture
  • Scales up to 64 nodes
  • Low latency
  • Configurable fault tolerance

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) enables application availability and mobility across sites that are in private cloud environments. By taking full advantage of the encapsulation and isolation of virtual machines, Site Recovery Manager enables simplified automation of disaster recovery to meet recovery time objectives (RTOs). SRM also helps reduce costs that are associated with business continuity plans, and achieve low-risk, predictable results for recovery of a virtual environment.

The following user interfaces are available for VMware SRM.

  • vCenter Clients
  • VMware API
  • VMware CLI

VMware SRM features:

VMeare SRM offers the following features.

  • Nondisruptive recovery testing
  • Automated orchestration workflows
  • Automated recovery of network and security settings
  • Extensibility for custom automation
  • Orchestrated cross-vCenter vMotion
  • Centralized recovery plans
  • Policy-based management