Determining the Required Subscription Capacity for VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere Foundation

• VCF and vSphere Foundation subscription capacity is based on the total number of physical CPU cores of each CPU on all the ESXi hosts associated with the VCF instances or vCenter Server that customers plan to license with VCF or vSphere Foundation, respectively.
• Customers must purchase a minimum license capacity of 16 cores per CPU.
• Foundation Subscription Licensing= The VCF and vSphere Foundation subscription capacity that requires licensing is the greater of either:

Determining the Required Subscription Capacity for vSAN

• The vSAN capacity subscription capacity is based on the total raw physical storage (TiBs) claimed by vSAN on all the ESXi hosts in each vSAN Cluster associated with the vCenter Server or VCF instances that customers plan to license for vSAN. 
• vSAN Subscription capacity = Total number of TiBs claimed by vSAN in each ESXi host x number of ESXi hosts in each cluster.

General Licensing Notes:

• Each core requires a single license. These licenses do not come in bundles of 16.
• 16 cores is the minimum requirement to be purchased per CPU/physical processor.
• Each TiB claimed by vSAN requires a single license. There are no license minimums
• vSphere versions running 8.0U2b patch release and later will receive vSAN trial capacity in vSphere Foundation. Documentation and tools shared in this KB article assumes the software is on 8.0U2b or later.
• Software running prior releases (ex. vSphere 8.0U1 or 7.x) will not receive vSAN trial capacity. Instead, customers will need to license the total number of TiBs claimed by the vSAN cluster.

The following tables describe how to determine the required subscription capacity for VCF, vSphere Foundation and vSAN.

VCF with vSAN Capacity Table

VCF with vSAN Capacity Licensing Notes:

• VCF provides 1 TiB of vSAN entitlement for each VCF core purchased.
• Customers can allocate surplus vSAN TiB licenses from VCF to another vSAN cluster that may have higher storage capacity requirements in the VCF environment.
• Customers can always purchase an additional quantity of vSAN capacity for the incremental storage they may require for their environment.

vSphere Foundation with vSAN Capacity Table

vSphere Foundation with vSAN Capacity Licensing Notes:

• vSphere Foundation provides up to 100 GiB of vSAN trial capacity for each VVF core deployed in a vSAN cluster.
•  vSAN trial capacity is tied to the vSphere Foundation core and cannot be reallocated across the environment.
• If customers exceed the amount of vSAN trial capacity in the vSAN cluster, they must license the total number of TiBs claimed in the vSAN cluster starting from 0.
• vSAN trial capacity can be calculated as follows: Number of vSphere Foundation core licenses in each ESXi host deployed in the vSAN cluster x 100 GiB. Divide by 1024 to convert capacity to TiB for an easier comparison.

Symptoms:

VMware has created a tool to identify the number of Core licenses (with a minimum of 16 cores per physical CPU) and TiB licenses that are required to properly license the following VMware products – VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), and VMware vSAN for current environments.

The number of core licenses (with a minimum of 16 cores per physical CPU) required for vSphere Foundation and VCF and TiB licenses required for vSAN can be identified in one of two ways:

• For small deployments and ESXi hosts not connected to a vCenter Server:
  • Foundation: Navigate to Host > Hardware > CPU Processors and check the value of Cores per socket to determine how many cores your host has per CPU and calculate as described in the Determining the Required Subscription Capacity section. (See Figure 1 for an example screenshot of the UI).
  • vSAN: Select the vSAN cluster > Monitor > Capacity under the vSAN header > Capacity Overview and check the value of the raw storage in the vSAN Cluster and calculate as described in the Determining the Required Subscription Capacity section above. (See Figure 2 for an example screenshot of the UI).
• For larger deployments: VMware has developed the attached PowerCLI tool that collects and consolidates information on the quantity of core licenses (with a minimum of 16 cores per physical CPU) and TiB licenses required for each host connected to a vCenter Server.
• VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation require core licenses for all physical CPU cores on each CPU running the software. In the event users disable physical CPU cores in the BIOS settings or other means, the script may produce inaccurate results. As such, all physical CPU cores should be activated on each CPU when running the script.

PowerCLI tool

Prerequisite:

• VMware PowerCLI 10.x or greater installed.
• Download and extract the attached script.

Use:

1. Connect to vCenter Server:

Connect-VIServer -Server vCenter_Server

2. Import PowerCLI function:

Import-Module .\FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage.psm1

3. Run Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage function and specify deployment type to retrieve results. By default, the script will iterate through all vSphere Clusters.

Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage -DeploymentType VCF
Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage -DeploymentType VVF

Here is an example output after running the PowerCLI tool
VCF with vSAN Example

VVF with vSAN Example

The table below describes each of the columns in the Compute Usage and vSAN Usage sections. At the bottom of the output shows the total quantity of VCF or VVF cores and vSAN TiB licenses required.

• To specify a specific vSphere Cluster, you can use -ClusterName option:

Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage -ClusterName “Cluster_Name” – DeploymentType VCF

• To output the results into a CSV file, you can use -Csv option:

Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage -ClusterName Cluster_Name – DeploymentType VCF -CSV

• To name the CSV file, you can use -Filename option:

Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage -ClusterName Cluster_Name – DeploymentType VCF -CSV -Filename “name.csv”

Note: You will receive two files. The one with -vsan appended includes the TiB count information, while the other file includes the core count information.

Related Information

Figure 1 - Core Count


Figure 2 – TiB Count