vSphere licensing issue when adding host

[vesko_k]

Hi everyone,

We have a Vsphere Essentials 6.7 license and 3 hosts (2 CPU each) - VCS6-ESSL-C (vCenter 1 instance) and VS6-ESSL-C - for 6 CPUs.

We have added two of the hosts without issues but when adding the third host and assigning the license we get an error:

"License not available to perform the operation.

The VMware vSphere 6 Essentials license for "Host" 89.252.241.75 does not include "vSphere vMotion". Upgrade the license."

We never licensed vMotion nor we use it. The three hosts are identical from software point of view:

Client version: 1.33.4

Client build number: 14093553

ESXi version: 6.7.0

ESXi build number: 15160138

Another thing I tried is to assign the license manually through the ESXi interface (by providing the key) and then to readd the host. This time when adding the host it recognized that the license is already installed but again got the same error.

How do we get around this? We dont need, use or licensed vMotion and I dont understand why it is coming up at all... Initially the hosts had the Evaluation license (it hasnt expired) and I know it includes vMotion but it worked for the other two hosts.

Thank you

[IRIX201110141 · Accepted solution]

Do you have configured vMotion by accident? If so please unconfigure it because you cant apply or downgrades licenses when features are enabled/configured.

Regards,
Joerg

[vesko_k]

Thank you! It turned out that one of the VMKernel NICs had under Services enabled vMotion. Each host has two and on all it should be only Management, but on this one all the checkboxes were checked when created.

P.S. I just never though/expected that by allowing certain action to be performed over a vmkernel nic will actually "enable". That was a mistake on our side during configuration. Nice to know!

[IRIX201110141]

Same is true for DRS, FT and so on.

Regards,
Joerg