Start-VM Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.

[mcote_at_devolu]

Hi

This used to work and it suddenly stopped working!

ESXi 5.1.0

In the product our company makes we had created a dashboard that could do basic operations on Virtual machines.  A client submitted a bug this morning and I found that I had the same issue in my environment.

I tried using the CLI and I get the same error.  This is on Windows 7.

I found I had 3 updates that could be applied to the server and a new version of the CLI that had been released

I installed all the new stuff and I get the same error.

Any ideas?

[LucD]

It looks as if you  are using the "free" ESXi license on the server.

With that type of license some functionality is not available.

Can you check if these ESXi didn't get by accident some free ESXi licenses assigned ?

[mcote_at_devolu]

It worked for over a year

Product: VMware vSphere 5 Hypervisor Licensed for 1 physical CPUs (unlimited cores per CPU)

License Key: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Expires: Never

Product Features:

    Up to 32 GB of memory

    Up to 8-way virtual SMP

[mcowger]

The free version of ESXi was never licensed for 'write' operations via the API.  It was disabled in 4.1, and in 5.1.  There was a bug in 5.0 that allowed some of these to happen.

So, in order to perform write operations, you (your customers) need to pay for a basic license for ESXi

(note, that while I'm not an attorney (although I'm married to a licensing attorney) you probably can't just downgrade to 5.0...the license doesn't allow for it in any case, even though the technology failed to enforce it properly).

[mcote_at_devolu]

Hi

So this bug depends on the system date?  We installed that server more than a year ago, and used it successfully for all that time.

Would rolling back the system date work?

Thx for the info

[mcowger]

No, it depends on software version.

And again, regardless of whether there is a bug allowing for it or not, the free version of ESXi is not licensed for what you are trying to do, and I'd STRONGLY urge you to contact an attorney before going forward.

[mcote_at_devolu]

I'm a software engineer and I'm trying to understand. 

None of the answers on the forum explain why one day, after a year of successful operation, without having done any update on the server, it stopped working.

We dont really use VMWare internally, we just try to support our users as best as we can, so we have a ESXi installation just to develop our tools.

We have dashboards for VMWare, Hyper-V, XenServer and soon Parallels Virtuozzo and some of our users use a combination of those.  I just have to explain to the subset of our users that are operating VMWare ESXi at their workplace, why the VMWare dashboard will only work for full fledged VMWare vSphere operators starting now. 

Coming back form this conversation and having as an explanation that "it worked because there was a bug, but the condition causing the bug just disappeared" is not good customer service for my part.  Personally I would expect more, and I know that my clients will definitly want more.