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The free version will probably meet your needs for the lab. The paid versions give you features such as fail over, vmotion, and other features that typically require multiple hosts. If you only use one host I would stick with the free version for the lab.
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vsphere eseentials is $500 and gives you vcenter which gives you more than a standalone enterprise license. &nbsp;Most of the certifications and value in vmware is shared storage, if you want a lab you should have a few ESXi hosts (nested or physical) and a VM or physical server using FreeNAS or similar for NFS/VMFS datastores.
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Even if you need the features you get with paid licenses, a lab environment is usually time limited. So if you don't enter any license keys during setup you are in trial mode. During the trial period all the features are usable.
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Thanks Andrew,<br />
<br />
Perfect answer for helping me make my decision.
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<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
Hello Experts,<br />
<br />
I'm toying with the idea of purchasing a &quot;Enterprise&quot; license of ESXi. However, I'm not sure if I really need all the bells and whistles of an &quot;Enterprise&quot; license of ESXi.<br />
<br />
All I need ESXi for at this stage is to build a lab almost identical to the one described in the following link;<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ithitman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ccie-v5-ine-home-lab-part-1-configuring.html" rel="ugc">http://ithitman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ccie-v5-ine-home-lab-part-1-configuring.html</a><br />
<br />
At the moment, I think I can get away with the free version, but I'm not sure of all the benefits of the licensed version.<br />
<br />
Please Note.<br />
I have no problem paying for the licensed version if there are functions and features that without the licensed it wouldn't be possible to build the lab.<br />
<br />
I look forward to your comments<br />
<br />
Regards<br />
<br />
Carlton
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</div>


Hello Experts,

I'm toying with the idea of purchasing a "Enterprise" license of ESXi. However, I'm not sure if I really need all the bells and whistles of an "Enterprise" license of ESXi.

All I need ESXi for at this stage is to build a lab almost identical to the one described in the following link;

http://ithitman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ccie-v5-ine-home-lab-part-1-configuring.html

At the moment, I think I can get away with the free version, but I'm not sure of all the benefits of the licensed version.

Please Note.
I have no problem paying for the licensed version if there are functions and features that without the licensed it wouldn't be possible to build the lab.

I look forward to your comments

Regards

Carlton

Merits of Purchasing VMware Vsphere License

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.