Forum Discussion

BirtyB's avatar
BirtyB
Level 4
6 years ago

Which Tier for ESXi?

Hi,

We are entirely vmware based and have a total of 9 ESXi hosts each with 2 physical CPU's.  We run a mixure of Windows and Linux guest vm's within our vSphere environment.  We will have 1 (Windows) Master server and 1 (Windows) Media server and they will belong to the vSphere envoironment.  SQL and Exchange will be running on guests on each ESXi server.  We cannot use NEVC licenses and we will not discuss capacity licencing as we have the correct license for this.

I would be incredibly grateful if someone could please confirm quantity and Tier model we would need for each license:

? x NETBACKUP ENT SERVER WLS 1 SERVER HARDWARE

? x NETBACKUP ENT CLIENT WLS 1 SERVER HARDWARE

? x NETBACKUP CLIENT APPLICATION AND DB PACK WLS 1 SERVER HARDWARE

Many thanks,

B

8.1.2
  • davidmoline's avatar
    davidmoline
    Level 6
    6 years ago

    Hi BirtyB

    If I understand correctly, you have 9 ESXi servers each 2 sockets.
    Your master and media server will be running as VM guests - you don't say how many vCPUs you will allocate.
    You will be running some form of Exchange or SQL on each ESXi server.

    For VMware the hardware tiering is that for Windows, Linux or Solaris_x86 (so tier one is limited to 1 CPU socket or vCPUI; Tier 2 is 2-3 CPU sockets; Tier 3 is 4-7 CPU sockets).

    For your ESXi servers you will need the following:
    9 x ENT Client Tier 2 licenses
    9 x App & DB Pack Tier 2 licenses

    For you Master & media server you will need either
    2 x Ent Server Tier 1 (if using only 1 CPU)
    or
    2 x Ent Server Tier 2 (if using 2 or 3 CPUs - if you allocate more, then the tiering will increase also).

    Note with the virtual master/media servers you can allocate multiple cores to a single vCPU without changing from Tier 1.

    Don't forget that you will also need to license something to send the data to - such as tape and tape library. If you send to a disk based target if it uses any form of data optimisation (e.g. MSDP, Data Domain, HP StoreOnce), then you will also need a DPOO license for your FETB.

    Cheers
    David