My Situation:
My boss wants to get a quote on VMware software licenses in order to set up a VMware teaching lab for a California community college.
The class will be a full 16 to 18 week semester (3 to 4 hours per week) covering the basics of VMware, with exams, labs, and homework. We are not planning the class to be "certificate complient" but we are looking into becomming a VMware academic partner in the future.
The Instructor (me) is familier with the principals of VSphere and will continue to train over the summer (I have installed and used workstation, esxi hypervisor, and of course vSphere client but I am in need of further training)
The Lab:
16 students will work in pairs on 8 "stations". Each station has the following setup:
1 dell Optiplex 760 (Core 2 Duo e8400 processor) 8GB Ram
2 dell Poweredge T110 (Xeon X3430) 16GB Ram (Both servers and desktop conneted via usb KVM switch)
All systems have EZDock sata docking stations (we have plenty of extra hard drives)
All systems have 2 physical giabit ethernet ports.
Gigabit switches with ports enouth for all systems.
My boss wants to purchase a QNAP TS-459 Pro with enough drives to support the system.
My Issue:
I called VMware pre-sales support. They were nice, and said that they will look into the software requirements (The person I spoke with, I think his name was "Rudy" suggested the VSphere "Essentials" kit would be a good starting point. I am not sure about this. What is in the Essentials kit. Licenses for esxi hosts? Workstation licenses? Vcenter server licenses?
I called Dell, they are a national VMware distributer and should be able to offer us academic pricing. Again, they were nice, but I am running out of time and I need to see how much this software will cost so we can plan accordingly.
Should I just purchase (per station)
One workstation license
One Vcenter server license
Any number of esxi licenses. (The two servers could each have one esxi host running and any number of vms. The desktop, I assume, could be setup with workstation, and have VM server domain controller, VM Vcenter server, VM production machines, VM sql server ect.
I am not sure, and I need some ballpark figure in order to at least start the purchas funding request.
Will it cost $2000, $5000, $10,000? Or can I just use the free trial versions of everything for the 16 to 18 weeks the class will run. We would be rebuilding all the machines every semester anyway. The students need to see how the lab is set up, and even assist in setting it up before we start the "official" vmware labs. I like to show the students the setup anyway, No telling what they will get out of it.
Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you forum members for ANY advice you may have to offer (Yes, even if it includes telling me to get more training, I asked my boss to make room for that in the budget as well).
Regards.