Need Specification for VM -ESXI

Xeon Gold with 12-16 Core and a Perc 965 with a bunch of 960er RI SATA SSDs.

1. A Windows Server lic contais 16 Cores because its the minumum for a Host
2. vSphere Std. have a minimum of 16 Cores

I dont understand what you mean with "iSCSI".   A ESXi with local storage provides one or more VMFS Datastores for all of your VMs.

Regards,
Joerg

Hello I'd say I'd find out whether the

iSCSi is

iSCSI target

or iSCSI Initiator.

Respectfully,