Failed to reconfigure virtual machine W81Entx64-vs2017. There are insufficient licenses to complete this operation.
Searching for “There are insufficient licenses to complete this operation.” memory did not reveal much, so at first I thought I had a memory issue.
A quick look at esxtop in memory (m) mode indicated that was totally fine:
BTW: esxtop is a fantascit tool, with truckloads of information, so you should definitely read these:
- [WayBack] ESXTOP – Yellow Bricks
- [WayBack] Interpreting esxtop 4.1 Statistics |VMware Communities (still very relevant)
Then something occurred to me:
The cause was that I tried to update the memory of an ESXi Windows VM which I thought I had shut-down from within Windows, but actually bumped an error message during the shutdown.
Shutting down properly (shutdown -s -t 0 in Windows), then increasing the memory worked fine:
Virtual machine W81Ent64-vs2017 was successfully reconfigured.
ESXi cannot increase the memory of a live system, hence the license error as per [WayBack] VMware Hot-Add: How and When to Use it:
One of the most common questions I receive on the daily management of virtual machines is if you should turn on hot-add features and why doesn’t VMware turn them on by default. The answer is very clear.
What are the requirements for Hot-add/Hot-plug:
- Your virtual machines need to run at minimum hardware version 7.
- Hot-add/Hot-Plug is not compatible with Fault Tolerance
- vSphere Advanced, Enterprise or Enterprise plus.
- Only hot-add is possible. You cannot “hot-remove” RAM or vCPUs.
- Hot-Add/Hot-plug must be supported by the VM operating system!
- Guest-OS licensing limitations need to be monitored and taken into consideration. You are changing the number of vCPUs/RAM!
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 