VMWare Licensing

Do you mean VMware High Availability e.g. VMware HA.

This function restarts VMs on other hosts, if the host the VMs are running on should fail, with an uncontrolled shutdown, e.g. host crash.

They can be a delay of 1-2 minutes whilst the VM are restarted.

What do you mean by failover, there are lots of options here, the more you pay, the better failover becomes...

My other big question is if a VM fails and slides to another box, doesn’t the SAN become a single point of failure?  

Yes, SAN is a single point of failure!

I have been told that there is a feature that when a VM is not utilized it will slide the resources to ones that are under heavier loads if that is the case what feature is that?

I think this "feature" is really inherit with the hypervisor, if the VM is powered on, and does not use much CPU and Memory, it will not impact performance, but it will still take up storage, memory and CPU - best turn it off.

Also how many ESXi servers do you have, and how many processors per server...

VMware vSphere is licensed per filled socket in the host.

You could start with VMware vSphere Essentials Plus....

which licenses you for

3 (three) x 2 CPU ESXi Hosts
1 vCenter Server license to manage above.

BUT, it cannot be upgraded, and is like a started edition, with max of 3 hosts..... so if you were ever thinking of more than 3 hosts... you would need to consider other options.

https://store.vmware.com/store?Action=home&Locale=en_IE&SiteID=vmwde

It includes VMware vSphere HA, vMotion (live migration of VMs) and vSphere Replication, - a form of failover.... e.g. replicate VMs to other hosts e.g. DR site

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-vsphere-essentials-kits-datasheet.pdf

Given the volume of VMs I think I am going to need a ton of servers?  Essentially a core per ?   It is disappointing about the powering off, as we need them up and running, just wish the resources could move around when not utilized.

How would a hypervisor take the CPU and RAM away assigned to a live VM, and allocate it to another VM, without it crashing ? (or powering it off), or using storage!

(there is a Suspend option!)

A Server (virtual) still needs to have some CPU and RAM present.... BUT remember if it's not busy or active, that will always be available in the pool fo other VMs to use....

BUT...be careful here..... lets say you have 10 VMs all allocated with 4GB each, total of 40GB when ALL VMs are active and busy doing things...

You have 40GB in the host, this is active memory, when a VM is less busy..... it will not be using all 4GB, so some may be available to the host.... but you need to be careful if you oversubscribe memory, because if all VMs demand memory at the same time, your host will run out!

What the hypervisor can do, if the hypervisor experiences cpu or memory pressure, is borrow cpu and ram from less utilised VMs, but it's not really...

Resources are kind of moved around and shared, but not completely removed.

Remember that Hypervisors consolidate VMs.... so resource are being saved if not used.

I wondering if the person you spoke to means DRS, which always tries to give the resources a VM needs by moving VMs automatically around the cluster of ESXi hosts... so they always get their CPU and RAM entitlement.....

I am not certain it is DRS, but I am looking for the most efficient way (VM Features) to maximize the hardware (Bang for the buck) without breaking the bank.   Thank you so much for your detailed answers by the way.

Features cost money, so it depends on what are your requirements.

So for instance, the current environment has 264GB of RAM and 54 physical cores, how are that many servers running with those specs?

easy, it's called a hypervisor, and scheduling....

that pretty good,l because we work on 8GB per core, memory in a server, and your ratio is 4.8, which is very good.

Not quite sure what this has to do with VMware licensing ?

Is that the total physical servers, memory and cores you've just totalled...?

Yes, that is the total physical servers we've added up.