VMware just released two new editions of vSphere which are specifically targeted at retail store / branch office environments. A PDF describing these package can be found here and the solution page on VMware.com can be found here.
- VMware vSphere Essentials for Retail and Branch Offices offers a package solution for each of a customer’s branch offices to scale agility, security, and efficiency across the organization.
- VMware vSphere Essentials Plus for Retail and Branch Offices provides a turnkey solution for complete business agility and continuity at all remote sites by adding high availability and data protection.
vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide
So, errrm, yeah, what does this give you over the standard Essentials? management from a standard vCenter?
Read the PDF and the various tabs on the page, but still not quite getting it….
Interesting indeed.
It looks like the only major difference is that you can purchase a full Gold or Platinum support package on both Essentials RBO and Essentials Plus RBO. On the regular Essentials package you can only purchase per incident support. Since it’s the same price that alone might make it worth it to use instead of Essentials.
Other than that, I’m still not sure what the difference is.
Matt, I have quotes for Essentials with Gold or Plat support…..
http://store.vmware.com/store/vmware/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/productID.126843700 also seems to disagree with you, Essentials has + subscription, and Essentials Plus has gold and plat options….Still not been updated for the remote/branch office ed
They make it sound like you’ll be able to use vcenter linked mode to link it back to your main vcenter, which wasn’t the case with vcenter foundation (they’re calling it vcenter for essentials now, which just makes it more confusing)