ESXi 5 (vSphere 5) on Xserve: failed license key?

[jhtodd]

I've successfully installed ESXi 5 on my Xserve 3,1 machine.  I have 24G of RAM, and 2x4 (8 cores) CPUs.  I'm able to get in on the management console using VMWare Fusion 4.0 on my Mac (just purchased - no problem) - everything is going great, almost.  I'm about to covert some of my ancient VMware Server machines over.

I was under the impression that ESXi 5 was "free" under a certain amount of memory.  Apparently, the key I received as part of the download process does not understand that, or there is a problem reporting the configuration of my machine to the software.  I enter the key into the license manager, and I get a window that says "The license key entered does not have enough capacity for this entity." 

Google returns no hits on this phrase.  So I'm stuck with a time-bombed copy of ESXi 5, and actually, I'm uncertain even if I purchased a copy of ESXi 5 that it would work.  I'm not going to go through the effort of converting all my machines if this is a dead-end process.

Anyone have any suggestions?

PS: the process for getting a "key" for ESXi 5 is possibly the most frustrating and circular process I've ever gone through, perhaps with the exception of trying to work with Microsoft on-line.

JT

[golddiggie]

ESXi 5 'free' version is supposed to be able to have 32GB of RAM regardless of the CPU (socket) count... If the key you're entering isn't working that way I would either register for another one, or contact VMware support about the issue...

[wdroush1 · Accepted solution]

This page:

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/p/activate.php?p=free-esxi5&lp=default

At the bottom:

Terms and Conditions

This license key can be deployed on an unlimited number of physical hosts, but is restricted to deployment on less than or equal to 1 Physical Servers. Click here to Change

Have you deployed it on more than one server? Bump that free count up. I believe this would happen if you went above CPU restrictions on v4 (I dunno how this will work in v5 though).

Edit:

Clicking there to change doesn't work for me, so I wouldn't be surprise if there is some kind of bug with the new licenses.

[jhtodd]

That did the trick.  I just for the life of me couldn't find the page that gave me the license signup - thanks for the link.  The license I obtained via that interface worked, and now the server seems to show the correct non-expiring license data in the information page.

JT