What is the procedure for licensing Windows 2008R2 Datacenter on VmWare ESXi?

Question

Virtualization

Greetings.
I ask for help from specialists regarding the direct use of Microsoft Datacenter licenses with the VmWare ESXi 5.5 hypervisor
Infrastructure:
1. Blade server, blades with two processors on board;
2. VmWare ESXi is installed on the blades 5. Migration is configured;
3. At the moment, the virtual machines are running MS Server 2008R2 Standart. Raised domain, licensing server.
4. Purchased a Datacenter license for the number of blade processors (CISDataCtr ALNG LicSAPk MVL) and an upgrade from Std to DataCrt (CISDataCtr ALNG SASU MVL CISStd).
If I understand correctly, then you need to reinstall the system on virtual machines from Standard to Datacenter and activate the Datacenter keyalready directly to each virtual machine.
Do you need to take any additional steps? Or on it the question of licensing is solved.

Answer 1

If licenses are purchased by the number of blades, then yes, technically nothing else is needed. Legally, you can still issue an internal order to assign licenses to these blades.

Answer 2

If licenses are purchased by the number of processors (and also keep in mind that if there is only one processor in the server, then at least two licenses are needed), then that's it. Your problems are solved.
There is no need to reinstall or even upgrade the OS edition - the Datacenter license allows you to use an unlimited number of any editions of Windows Server of the same version. That is, Win 2008/R2 Standart, Enterprise, Datacenter is possible, but Win 2012 is not.
The main thing is to assign each pair of licenses to a specific server, preferably documented (server serial - licenses). In case of verification.

Answer 3

You don't need to reinstall the system. You can upgrade the edition using the DISM utility.
for example

Dism /online /Set-Edition: <имя выпуска> /AcceptEula /ProductKey:12345-67890-12345-67890-12345