Question : ESi (free) vs. VSX vs. VSphere

I'm still pretty new to VMware righ now I have been playing with a the free version of ESI 4.1 on a small server. May company would like to look into gett the paid for versio of VMware. here are my questions.

1) Can I do an inplace upgrade to the paid version of VSI?
2) I'm a small shop that using local storage with no SAN. Should what are the benefits of getting vSphere vs? ESI?
3) CAn I install vSI in a trail mode?

Answer : ESi (free) vs. VSX vs. VSphere

1. In place upgrade - yes. When you pay for VMware ESXi, you'll get a license key, and when you add this license key to the server, it will turn on those features you've paid for.

2. If you've only got a single ESXi server, it would be slightly over kill to use vSphere vCenter, although you would have the benefits of creating templates for quick server deployment.

3. To be able to use vMotion you'll need to have shared storage, it depends on what requirements your small shops requires in terms of availaibility and resilience etc.