from reading the user guide and various posts here I understand that failover hosts for replication need to be fully VMware-licensed. Is this correct?
Has anyone set up replication in a VMware essentials/essentials plus environment? How would this ideally be done licensing-wise? In case of three pre-existing production ESX hosts, the licensing bundle is already at its limit. Could one then just buy another essentials bundle for the DR site? I always thought, essentials was limited to "once per customer", but the more documents I read the more often I stumble upon "once per site".
Adding to my question: the "per site" reference was taken from the Pricing Guide (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf). Reading this again, the per site scenario is mentioned along with "retail and branch offices" and a minimum order quantity of 10. Nothing that my usual essentials customers would qualify for. :/
Sebastian, I recommend that you double check this information with your VMware sales representative, but I heard before from various sources (both on VMware Communities, and directly from VMware folks I have access too) that VMware allows using the same license to setup the standby environment (as long as it does not run any VMs). So you should be able to setup your DR site with the same license file, and in case you lose your production site, just failover to DR site and power on replica VMs there. Just make sure you don't run VMs on more ESX hosts than allowed by your license at any given moment to remain compliant.
Unfortunately, our VMware contact doesn't seem to be aquainted with licensing for DR purposes (other than in SRM setups) and the process of explaining the details has become tedious. Any chance we could get in touch with your VMware contacts or at least a reference to some official VMware document?
