First, determine the license entitlements for the vSphere environment, including the number of CPUs, hosts, and virtual machines. This information can be obtained from the license agreement and purchasing records.
Next, assign licenses to the appropriate hosts or clusters. This can be done using the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. Licenses can be assigned manually or automatically based on license keys.
To ensure compliance, periodic checks should be performed to ensure that the number of virtual machines and hosts does not exceed the maximum allowed by the license. License usage reports can be generated from within vSphere to monitor usage and stay within compliance.
To optimize license usage, consider using vSphere’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and High Availability (HA) features to consolidate workloads onto fewer hosts. This can also help to reduce hardware and maintenance costs.
Overall, effective licensing in vSphere requires a combination of understanding license entitlements, assigning licenses correctly, monitoring usage, and optimizing resource utilization.
