VMware vCenter Server v5 Licensing

Nope...you have a single, quad-core socket. But, you have hyperthreading enabled, which means you basically double your cores to 8 (logically; hyperthreading is a BIOS setting). So, that's where the "8" comes from. So, you should only be using ONE of your vSphere licenses for your host.

Regards.

~coolsport00

So would my license be preventing the software from using both physical processors?

Well, vCenter is licensed to the server it runs on, it could be physical or a virtual. If you run it  as a VM (which I recommend), you can assign as many cores (not dedicated CPU's) as you want.

Quote from the licensing whitepaper at vmware.com:

VMware vSphere 5 licensing removes all restrictions on physical
cores and physical RAM

If you run it on a physical server, then a standard license is restricted to use only one CPU socket (but all the cores on CPU1, regardless of number of cores).

Does it makes any sense?

That does make sense xcomiii, however I still do not understand how I would make use of that second physical processor.  It sounds like I'm only utilizing 1 processor and the other one is just sitting there idle.

How many licenses have you purchased from VMware, if you have only purchase 1 CPU, the second CPU is sat their doing nothing!

Maybe you have not enabled CPU2 in the BIOS? I am not sure if VMWare enforces the CPU limit or if it allows you to violate the license terms.

Anyway, it is perfectly fine to run vCenter in a VM, so you can use the physical server for other purposes, for example as another ESXi host.

I've checked the BIOS and all I can find is enable virtualization, which I already enabled.  Other than that there doesn't seem to be any other place to make sure this extra processor is working.

I know my server is quad-processor but I was under the impression that it was across two physical sockets

I guess that your server is single-cpu with quad core (showing 4 CPU's in Task Manager in Windows). You can verify this by downloading CPU-Z and check your CPU model.

Hey guys.  Sorry for the long delay but I finally got a screenshot with CPU-Z.  Can you verify that what I'm seeing in my vCenter is actually correct.  1 CPU and 1 processor.  CPU-Z seems to think that's what I have but would that not only read the VM's virtual hardware and not the physical hardware?

Thanks.
cpuz.PNG

does not look right to me, if the processor is a

intel xeon e5620

see here, Intel states 4 cores, 8 threads

http://ark.intel.com/products/47925/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5620-%2812M-Cache-2_40-GHz-5_86-GTs-Intel-QPI%29

CPU-Z seems wrong?

are you running this in a VM?

hanccocka I am running it in a VM.  No other way I can run it unfortunately.  Unless I'm missing something.

I too thought this information to be incorrect. It seems as though I'm only utilizing a quarter of my actual processing speed.

Okay, that information is correct, when running in a VM, CPU-Z will see the Host Processor, but it will only see the Cores/vCPUs associated with the VM. Which is based on how many vCPU you have allocated to the VM. e.g. 1.

You would have to run CPU-Z on the host (with no hypervisor)

You would have to run CPU-Z on the host (with no hypervisor)

How would I run the software on the host without the hypervisor?  It's an ESXi server.

Thanks hanccocka.  I'll try to use a miniPE I keep on hand.  Maybe that will work to give me the full details of the server I'm running vCenter on.