To use vSphere Bitfusion after the evaluation period, you must purchase valid VMware vSphere® Enterprise Plus Edition™ and vSphere Bitfusion add-on licenses.

VMware product are licensed differently. Since vSphere Bitfusion servers run on ESXi hosts, you must understand how an ESXi host consumes license capacity. For more information, see Licensing for ESXi Hosts in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation.

For a vSphere Bitfusion server that runs on an ESXi host with one CPU socket, you require one VMware vSphere® Enterprise Plus Edition™ license and one vSphere Bitfusion add-on license. Each vSphere Bitfusion add-on license allows you to manage up to two GPUs that are connected to the host. vSphere Bitfusion clients do not require licenses.

For ESXi hosts that have additional CPU sockets and GPUs, see the following table to understand how many VMware vSphere® Enterprise Plus Edition™ and vSphere Bitfusion add-on licenses you require to run vSphere Bitfusion.

Table 1. Required number of licenses per CPU sockets and number of GPUs
Number of CPU sockets Number of GPUs Number of VMware vSphere® Enterprise Plus Edition™ licenses Number of vSphere Bitfusion add-on licenses
1 1 1 1
1 2 1 1
1 3 2 2
1 4 2 2
2 1 2 1
2 2 2 1
2 3 2 2
2 4 2 2
2 5 3 3
2 6 3 3
Additional requirement is that each vSphere Bitfusion add-on license requires one active VMware vSphere ® Enterprise Plus Edition™ license. For example, if you have a single ESXi host with two CPUs and four GPUs, you require two VMware vSphere ® Enterprise Plus Edition™ licenses and two vSphere Bitfusion add-on licenses. If you have an ESXI host with two CPUs and 10 GPUs, you require five VMware vSphere ® Enterprise Plus Edition™ licenses and five vSphere Bitfusion add-on licenses.

To understand how to apply and manage VMware vSphere® Enterprise Plus Edition™ licenses, see Managing Licenses in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation.