6.5.1

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
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Unable to Power On a Virtual Machine
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Unable to Configure or Use a Feature
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 to 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.
VMware, Inc.
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