I currently have a client who is looking to refresh/upgrade some existing physical SBS 2003 servers to Windows 2012 R2, and due to tight budget constraints are looking to utilise virtualization on Essentials 2012 R2 rather than Standard 2012 R2. They will
probably end up with multiple Windows Server 2012 R2 OS VM's in addition to some Linux VM's as well.
From what I can establish (through the minimal documentation I've found so far on Essentials 2012 R2 in regards to its virtualization capabilities) you can only host a single VM on Essentials 2012 R2 of the same OS version (I suspect tho that you can host
multiple non-MS OS VM's on the Essentials server without breaching the license restrictions)
I am aware with Standard 2012 R2 you can stack Standard 2012 R2 licenses to increase your licensed VM count on a Standard 2012 R2 host but is this at all possible on Essentials 2012 R2 (using Essentials 2012 R2 licenses)??? Whereever I look in relation to license stacking, its all referring to Standard vs DataCenter licensing as there is only a brief mention of virtualization on Essentials but no one tends to go into detail about whats possible/available for it.
I understand the other limitations with Essentials (eg 25 users max, 1 Essentials OS DC only in the domain, etc) which is fine in this case, I just need to confirm if the possibility of increasing the VM count exists on Essentials.
Personally I'm pushing the client to upgrade to Standard 2012 R2, but I need some hard facts around virtualization to prove that Standard is the way to go and not Essentials. Links to Microsoft articles/documents where it states virtualization limits on Essentials (and/or a direct comparison between Essentials and Standard in relation to virtualization) would be appreciated.