Windows Server Standard 2012 R2 virtualized on VMware vSphere Essential Plus Kit.

[ksumbly]

Hi There 

I have couple of doubts for which need your expert advice have approx 25 guest VMs of Windows 2012R2 virtualized on vSphere Essential Plus across 3 physical hosts. My servers are getting retired and quickly need replacement. 

From a licensing prespective can I move the same guest VMs and the licenses to the new server and if so how-please share the necessary steps and dependency if any. Also 2012 R2 will be supported till what time.

[#2]

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2021/07/14/plan-your-windows-server-2012-and-2012-r2-... , October 2023 it will be out of support... I think you can just install your new 3 hosts with VMware and Vcenter, connect your current datastores to it (I hope you have fiber/iSCSI) and delete the VM's from Vcenter on the old servers but don't delete from disk. On the new Vcenter, open the datastore and import the VM's by browsing to their folder and double-clicking the .vmx file.

Just prepare your new hosts for datastore and network connectivity and make sure that all settings are the same for VLAN's/Port-groups/Time-servers/DNS/etc.

[#3]

Thanks a ton, do I need new license for VMware or Windows or the existing can be ported and used for the same.

[#4]

You can use the same licenses, during migration you can use the trial license on the new servers. When all the VM's are migrated you can turn of the old servers and use the licenses on the new servers. (Trial license is a fully licensed one for 60 days)

For Windows you can use the same licenses if all servers were licensed indivually, if you were using Datacenter licenses you can keep those if the new servers have the same amount of sockets.