6.0.1

Troubleshooting Licensing 9
The troubleshooting licensing topics provide solutions to problems that you might encounter as a result of
an incorrect or incompatible license setup in vSphere.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Troubleshooting Host Licensing,” on page 97
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“Unable to Power On a Virtual Machine,” on page 98
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“Unable to Configure or Use a Feature,” on page 98
Troubleshooting Host Licensing
You might encounter different problems that result from an incompatible or incorrect license configuration
of ESXi hosts.
Unable to Assign a License to an ESXi Host
Under certain conditions, you might be unable to assign a license to an ESXi host.
Problem
You try to assign a license to an ESXi host, but you cannot perform the operation and you receive an error
message.
Cause
You might be unable to assign a license to an ESXi host because of the following reasons:
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The calculated license usage for the host exceeds the license capacity. For example, you have a vSphere
license key with capacity for two CPUs. You try to assign the key to a host that has four CPUs. You
cannot assign the license, because the required license usage for the host is greater than the license
capacity.
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The features on the host do not match the license edition. For example, you might configure hosts with
vSphere Distributed Switch and vSphere DRS while in evaluation mode. Later, you try to assign
vSphere Standard license o the hosts. This operation fails because the vSphere Standard edition does
not include vSphere Distributed Switch and vSphere DRS.
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The host is connected to a vCenter Server system that is assigned a license that restricts the edition of
the license that you want to assign.
Solution
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Assign a license with larger capacity.
VMware, Inc.
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