ESXi licensing

[jim7jim]

I have 4 ESXi hosts and an VMware Essentials license so only 3 hosts are covered. The 4th host uses the free ESXi license. Sometimes I get a 'Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation' error in Veeam using the 4th host. If I buy another Essentials license to cover the 4th ESXi host, I assume Veeam would then work with any operation between the 4 hosts?

[Gostev]

That is correct. Thanks!

[Regnor]

vSphere essentials is limited to 3 hosts, so you won't be able to extend the license to a 4th host. Also keep in mind that vCenter essentials can only manage up to 3 hosts.

[Gostev]

I looked at this some times ago. While indeed you can't extended a VMware Essentials license to a 4th host, there were no restrictions of buying a second, separate VMware Essentials license and using it for the 4th host. Needless to say, you cannot manage these two deployments centrally in the vSphere console - but you can certainly add both of these separate vSphere infrastructures to Veeam and live a happy life at least in terms of data protection.

[Regnor]

Well I also can't find the restriction anymore so it must have changed some time ago...sorry for that.