Windows Server 2016 Licensing Vmware Esxi

I am new to the infrastructure world i wanted to understand how does windows server licensing work on esxi.

Windows server 2016 licensing vmware esxi. When you assign a vsphere license to a host the amount of cpu capacity that is consumed is equal to the number of physical cpus in the host. For windows server 2016 version licensing model a ll physical cores in the server must be licensed. And both standard and datacenter are per core. This step by step how to guide is aimed at readers who have yet to install a windows os on a vmware hypervisor.

Esxi hosts are licensed with vsphere licenses. You use a license key to activate a vm but that does not mean that the license is assigned to the vm. Currently we are running our vms on hyper v and are planning to migrate to vsphere. A virtual machine is never licensed.

I understand i ll have to licenses each physical core. Majority of our vms will be running with guest os as windows server 2019 2016. For windows server 2016 standard you are only licensing 2 x virtual oses and that does not grant you license mobility rights to move those virtual servers between hosts. A minimum of 8 core licenses is required for each physical processor.

From windows server 2016 onwards licensing for all editions standard and datacenter will now be based on physical cores per cpu a minimum of 16 core license sold in packs of 2 so a minimum of 8 licenses to cover 16 cores is required per each physical server. With 2016 standard licensing you ll get 2 ose per standard license. Vsphere desktop that is intended for vdi environments is licensed on per virtual machine basis. Each vsphere license has a certain cpu capacity that you can use to license multiple physical cpus on esxi hosts.

Servers are licensed based on the number of processor cores in the physical server. So that s either 4 x standard licenses or 1 x datacenter licenses. A minimum of 16 core licenses is required for each server.