Deactivate non-licensed features

[deepmessage]

Hello,

How can we deactivate non-licensed features like vMotion?

I already tried this: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1010376

But in vsphere the feature is erroneously still recognized as active (see screenshot).

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards

Alexander Reusch

[scott28tt]

For vMotion, don't you need to amend all the VMkernel ports which you had previously enabled for vMotion traffic?

[deepmessage]

vMotion was deactivated here (please see attached screenshot)

[deepmessage]

Hello scott28tt,

Any other idea?

It's a pity that we bought a license for 3 hosts, but we can't use it at all because of this little thing....

Thanks in advance, kind regards

Alexander Reusch

[scott28tt]

I can't read German, there are users here who do who can hopefully help you.

[deepmessage]

no problem - I attached the English ones.

In the VMkernel adapters there was previously "vMotion" enabled, but now disabled.

When I tried it now (days later...) it worked to assign the license!
How can I accelerate this process? I have to do this with two other esxi hosts.

The third one has many other features enabled (see screenshot 5 attached). Hm... I can't even find vmotion enabled on this host (screenshot 6) - where can I disabled the not licensed features?

[deepmessage]

Hello scott28tt,

Any other idea? i need a solution urgently!

Thanks in advance, kind regards

Alexander Reusch

[Kinnison]

Hi,

Could you explain which kind of licenses referring to your ESXi hosts are applied at this time and which kind of licenses you would like to apply. What you state is not an error but a warning that tells you what features you won't be able to use.

Guessing, since you had to disable "vMotion" and that warning this would make me think that you want to assign basic "essential" licenses, but then if the vCenter object uses "standard" licenses then your hosts would be immediately disconnected from it.

Regards,
Ferdinando

[deepmessage]

Hello Ferdinando,

Yes, you are right: we used a higher license before and now we want to use "VMware vSphere 6 Essentials".

In my opinion, it's an error if I can't click on "OK" to continue.... (see vmotion-Error7.PNG).

With kind regards

Alexander Reusch

[Kinnison]

Hi, deepmessage,

So what screenshot #5 shows is a warning while your last screenshot #7 is an actual error message, and what are the specific details?

The most well-known features unavailable with the "essential" license level are vMotion / HA / DRS / vDS / Replication so make sure you have not used them or make sure they are no longer used, otherwise it is easy to run into problems with a license downgrade.

If you have applied a "standard" license to your vCenter object you cannot manage an ESXi host with "essential" licenses, it would be disconnected for: "Reason: Insufficient license on host". So at this point, IMHO doesn't make much sense to downgrade your license via vCenter because as long as you have not applied an "essential" license to the vCenter object as well they do not reconnect. There is also another possible problem, if you perform a license downgrade via the vCenter object, you may find that from the point of view of the vCenter object you have applied an "essential" license but your host instead continues to use the previous one, a mess.

At this point, first of all make sure that none of the advanced services we are talking about are in use on any of your hosts and then consider to disconnect them, manually assign you "essential" licence, assign the same licence level to the vCenter object and then reconnect them.

Before proceeding make sure you have adequate backups of (all) what makes up your vSphere infrastructure, anything can happen, "luck is blind but bad luck sees very well".

You have to decide because the risk is yours too, I don't take responsibility for it, mind you.

Regards,
Ferdinando