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
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.
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...
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.
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