Adding second virtual disk to Vm

[AdamLowe]

Hey guys,

I just loaded ESXi 4 on a server and i created 2 virtual machines and i went to add a second drive to one of the VM's and it gave me an error stating "There are insufficient licenses to complete this operation. Feature hotplug not licensed, requires have have"

Has anyone ever seen this error before?

Thanks!

[dab]

With ESXi4 you need a Hot-Plug License for every Hot-Plug-Actions including them which where free unter ESX3.5i.

So there is no Hot-Plug-Support with the free Edition.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

You will now need to shut down the guest to add an additional disk.

[AdamLowe]

Thanks guys! I did end up shutting the vm's down and adding the disks.

[Dracolith]

That really sucks and is ridiculous and quite despicable IMO.

Now I have to revert back to ESXi 3.5, because this feature is absolutely critical, and the lack of it is a deal breaker.

I'll be strongly considering the competition which hasn't had any problems hot-adding virtual disks.

The cost of the advanced edition for such a basic feature simply isn't worth it.

[iXSEs]

Hey,

my workaround was:

1. Take off the license-key to get the 60 days trial.

2. Add the second disk

3. Play the key back.

No restart required!

[Dracolith]

That's only really useful if it's a brand new host. If the host was installed more than 60 days ago, the eval option isn't available anymore, because it expires. It might be useful only if it hasn't expired yet (which is a limited time period)...

Otherwise, switching back and forth between ESX Foundation license and Eval mode is not a good workaround for an environment that runs production VMs.

And the whole point of needing to hot-add a VMDK, is the VM is important, and you want to add more disk capacity without downtime.

The need arising for more capacity isn't something that normally occurs within 60 days of server deployment.

[iXSEs]

I´m completely agree!

[dzacharo]

+1

I sent an e-mail to VMWare requesting they lift this license requirement in next update. We are seriously thinking of moving back to 3.5i or moving to Xen (or KVM)...

[DSTAVERT]

Somewhere someone from VMware did make the statement that hot add of hard drives was going to be fixed.

[dzacharo]

Here is the reply from VMWare. Good news!

"This is a known bug, expected to be resolved by vSphere 4.0 U1. The correct behavior is that hot add of disk should work with every license.i.e. hot add of disk is still free.

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks and regards

Leena Joshi

Group Manager, Product Marketing

VMware"