aSAN / aSV / aNET Licensing on HCI: Per-Core or Per-Socket?
  

George Fady Lv2Posted 2026-Aug-11 21:29

Worth clarifying since it comes up a lot and some datasheet wording makes it genuinely confusing: on HCI 6.11.1, is aSAN (and the standard modules aSV/aNET) licensed per physical CPU core or per physical CPU socket across the cluster?
Confirmed answer: per physical CPU core. Your required license count needs to be equal to or greater than the total physical CPU cores summed across all hosts in the cluster — not the socket count. This matches the HCI 6.11.1 manual and the Support Portal License FAQ.
The confusion usually comes from datasheet language like "per physical CPU" — that's describing the commercial SKU (how the license is packaged/sold), not the technical entitlement check the platform actually runs at cluster initialization and license import, which is core-count based.
A couple of practical notes:


  • Always size and renew licenses against your cluster's total physical core count to avoid a shortfall.

  • If your cluster is centrally managed via SCP: after a license renewal, the Primary Cluster license does not update automatically. You have to manually re-push it from Cluster License → Edit, with module quantities matching or exceeding total core count. This trips people up constantly — worth double-checking after every renewal.

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ND Lv3Posted 2026-Aug-12 14:09
  
Thanks for the clarification.
Humayun Ahmed Lv4Posted 2026-Aug-12 13:02
  
Thanks to share!