We get aksed alot about VMware's licensing in terms of processors vs. cores vs. sockets. Hopefully this short article will clear it up.

VMware vSphere is licensed based on the number of processors on the physical host.

Each processor in a socket may contain multiple cores. VMware customers may deploy VMware vSphere on physical processors that contain up to six processing cores at no additional charge.

VMware vSphere Advanced and VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus editions provide an expanded core entitlement and allow customers to deploy on processors that contain up to 12 processing cores.

Additional information may be found at http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/multicore.html