ESX Demo Licence - Functionality After 30 days?

[Paul Hutchings]

Can anyone confirm what, if any, functionality remains with the VSA after 30 days?

Will it continue to work at all for a single VSA node, and if so, what storage limitations are there?

(I appreciate replication/snapshots etc. are not going to be available but the Registration tab in the CMC suggests some things may continue to work).

Thanks,
Paul

[teledata]

You can continue to use it as an iSCSI target.

No Snapshots
No Clustering
No replication
No scripting

etc....

[Paul Hutchings]

Interesting.

Any limitations on the amount of storage/LUNs you can create/allocate?

Oh and is this in terms with the license i.e. anything official that states that you're allowed to do this?

Cheers,
Paul

[René Loser]

Hi Paul,

10TB per VSA - builded from max. 5x 2TB LUNs.

But with Thin Provisioning you can add as many TB you want to your host.

what after 30 day: you can do it - anyway you don't get support for trial. ;-)

regards,
reNe

HP PreSales Storage

[Paul Hutchings]

Hi Rene,

Just to be really clear, you're saying that I can install a VSA stand-alone, and use it after 30 days, for up to 10tb, with no license concerns?

I'm asking as we're interested in Lefthand for a full SAN solution when our main SAN is replaced, however we have an immediate need for a relatively "dumb" 5tb of storage - VSA could be a good way for Lefthand to get a foot in the door.

[teledata]

You can continue to use it unlicensed.

BUT - if you use any of the "licensed" features, and you use them past the 30 day evaluation, those volumes (or the entire cluster, if you enable clustering) that used advanced features (Snapshots, Clustering, failover manager etc etc) will become unavailable. You need to disable the "offending" featured or license the VSA...

Also there is the ramification that if you put production data on an unlicensed VSA, and later have a problem, you have no direct vendor resources for support/resolution

[Gauche]

Just to provide more detail...
You can use the VSA unlicensed so long as you don't use "Storage Clustering", "Managed Snapshots", "Remote Copy", or "Multi-Site" features.
If you use those features a 30 day timer starts.
The things you can do without a license and no 30 day limit are...
-Create single VSA (clusters of one really)
-Manage as many singles as you want
-Create all the volumes you want
-Connect all the servers you want
-Use thin provisioning
-Created manual snapshots (it's only the scheduled ones that are licensed, hence "Managed" snapshots)
-SmartClone volumes all you want
-All the monitoring / snmp and stuff
-Etc

Really it's easier to say what you can't do without a license or 30 day limit. That is simply that you cannot cluster many VSA together, use network RAID, or create snapshot schedules, or take any remote copies.

Hope that helps.