What is vCenter Protect Essentials and Essentials Plus?

vCenter Protect – Essentials or Essentials Plus

Huh? What’s that? I know quite a lot about VMware, but still there is something that escapes from my view. This time it’s just the vCenter Protect product. vCenter Protect Essentials or vCenter Protect Essentials Plus as you might be wondering from the title of this article, is a product oriented for small businesses departmental offices etc… This patching technology was developped by Shavlik.com and acquisition of shavlik.com technology brought to VMware the possibility to provide this product which brings additional layer of automation for SMBs.

If you’re not 100% virtualized and you want still benefit of this centralized management solution, you can do so, since the vCenter Protect can span on both. You can centralize in one console both, the physical and virtual, in order to have central view.

What’s the pre requisites?

VMware vCenter Protect Essentials and Essentials Plus require access to a SQL Server database (SQL Server 2005, 2008 or SQL Server 2005, 2008 Express.). If you don’t have a SQL server in your organization, during the installation process, the SQL Express version of SQL will get installed.

The Windows installer 4.5 and .NET Framework 4.0 are required as well. And watch out, the latest release needs your server to be patched with latest Service Pack, because I tested the installation on my vCenter server ( Win 2008 R2) which was running without SP1 and the installer has just asked for it, without being able to continue….

What the product does?

In addition to vCenter’s Server management options, the VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus also includes Configuration Management, Antivirus, Power Management, ITscripts – leveraging PowerShell, (to automate workflow/business process needs), and more.

And in addition, it also manages third party software patches as well, like e.g., Adobe Reader®, Apple iTunes®, Mozilla Firefox®, and many more. And also Microsoft OS with all Microsoft applications, like Office.

Which client’s are supported?

All the Microsoft’s server software back from Windows 2000 up to 2008R2 Datacenter, CORE…. but also the workstation software from Windows 2000 Workstation, through the XP embedded, Tablet PC edition, Vista…. to Win 7.  See the full release notes here. (PDF)

A quick quote from the product page:

VMware vCenter Protect Essentials provides centralized patch management and asset inventory for SMBs and departmental needs. vCenter Protect Essentials Plus adds antivirus, power management, ITScripts, and configuration management for both virtual and legacy physical systems in an integrated solution. This includes centralized management for Windows operating systems and the most widely used Windows-hosted applications running on both virtual and physical servers and workstations.

What are The licensing options?

The vCenter Protect is licensed per management system, it means that if you manage 30 Virtual servers (or desktops) you need to buy 30 licenses. The minimum purchase quantity is 10.

What are the differences between Essentials and Essentials Plus?

As you can see on the image above, the Essentials edition version does not do only patching, but also the snapshot before/after patching management, Offline patching management,

The Essentials Plus does do besides the patching, also the AV scanning (with or without agent), Power managements for WOL – which basically does the power-down operations in the evenings and on weekends and wake machines up to deploy critical security patches and then put them back in a power saving state automatically to reduce attack surfaces and save energy.

And also configuration management and IT script supports, where you’re able to use predefined scripts, but also import other custom PowerShell scripts. Patching Templates VMs is also included in the Essentials plus version of the product.

And bellow another img. from VMware comparing both editions.

One last think. With the release of vSphere 5 there is no longer possible to patch offline VMs like that was the case in vSphere 4 with vSphere Update Manager. But the since the acquisition, the VMware Go Pro service has been proposed, which is an additional service for very small environments.

Source: VMware

 

You may also like:

1. Consolidate your physical servers with VMware Essentials for SMB promo
2. 50% off the regular price for vSphere Essentials
3. vSphere essentials promo till 25th of July
4. vSphere for SMB – Small business
5. Free training with VMware vSphere Essentials kits
6. Last week of promo for vSphere 4 Essentials
7. vMotion for SMB market with vSphere 4.1 Essentials Plus