we were hoping that we would be able to run a mix of basic and advanced licenses in the vmware environment, but due to our vmware esx server architecture, we could not. The virtual licenses are setup to be sold in “blocks” of 10 for advanced. So we had 3 vmware esx servers, ~60 RH Virtual Machines, so we wound up by a total of 6 RedHat Advanced Edition blocks. Each of these 6 blocks allows licensing for a total of 10 virtual machines each. That gives us 60 total licensed Redhat VMs.

We are going to dual quad core servers coming soon and that will take us out of the advanced edition licensing, so we should be able to order blocks of the Basic version. Does this help?

I do have a question though. I found your site and this explanation above via the following post on VMware’s site: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/189522 .

I would like to get a clarification on it though. When asked about the number of licenses you purchased you ultimately said you bought 6 of the RHEL-AP for VMware (inlcudes 10 guests/license) to cover your 60 Redhat VMs. However, you also indicate your have 4 4-core servers in the ESX farm. Aren’t you required to purchase the licenses on ALL the cores? In your case, I would expect that to mean you had to buy 16 licenses. You would then be able to support up to 160 Redhat VMs (because of the pooling).

Or am I missing something?