Some of you might already have been there. I know I have:

You have a large organization with more than 10 remote or branch offices. You have virtualized your entire back-end but those nasty site servers still remain a physical nuisance. Some regional offices have a complete data center with more than 20 servers just to make sure everyone can work locally. You want to virtualize it but you can’t convince your management to purchase 10 or more sets of Advanced of Enterprise (plus) licenses for those sites as that is far to expensive.

Now, what do you do? What I’ve done in the past is use a ‘free’ ESXi license and manage it as a standalone server. It is a possibility, but you lack a lot of enterprise features you really want to have. And what if the site is too big for just one host. And what about fail-over? One is None, we always say. So what’s the solution?

This is where VMware Essentials RoBo licensing comes in. (Remote Office/Branch Office) . With this license, you can manage those sites from your central vCenter server at a reduced price and still have all those features you so like and want when you virtualize with VMware.

The RoBo license ‘exception’ kicks in at 10 Essential or Essential Plus packages. What will  you get? Look below:

VMware vSphere Essentials for Retail and Branch Offices includes:

  • 6P licenses of VMware Hypervisor or VMware Hypervisor for use on up to 3 2P hosts per site
  • VMware vCenter Server for Essentials (manage up to 3 hosts)
  • VMware Update Manager
  • VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
  • VMware Symmetric Multi Processing (vSMP)
  • VMware vCenter Server Agents, with rights to centrally manage from vCenter Server Standard Edition (vCenter Server Standard Edition must be acquired separately)

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus for Retail and Branch Offices includes:

  • 6P licenses of VMware Hypervisor or VMware Hypervisor for use on up to 3 2P hosts per site
  • VMware vCenter Server for Essentials (manage up to 3 hosts)
  • VMware HA
  • VMware Data Recovery
  • VMware Update Manager
  • VMware vMotion
  • VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
  • VMware Symmetric Multi Processing (vSMP)
  • VMware vCenter Server Agents, with rights to centrally manage from vCenter Server Standard Edition (vCenter Server Standard Edition must be acquired separately)

Check out the pricing and conditions at your reseller, VMware representative or check out the RoBo site