We just purchased three x3650 M4 from IBM for our virtual environment. Due to time constraints i need to get this up and running so i can roll out some virtual machines for an application we must have ready to install and start testing this application before we go live with it in a few weeks.
this host has two 256gb SSD in a Raid 1 config. These are just temporary until we get our netapp 4243 shelves with 600gb 15k drives in. The esxi USB key offered from IBM was backordered, so they sent ths system with a blank key, they also sent me a link where i could download the custom IBM esxi image. i burned it to a cd then installed it onto the blank USB key in the server. i have the management network setup and can communicate with the host via the vsphere client loaded on my workstation. when i go to enter the evaluation license key i am getting the following messages and errors.
when i click on configuration>license features at the top it says:
you can unlock all esx server features for up to 60 days by activating this hosts evaluation period.
When i click edit it says eval mode no license key. Fair enough so i enter the eval key i got from vm website when i registered for the vsphere vcenter and operations manager suite. and get the following message:
License downgrade warning
Some features will become unavailable after license assignment
Host: my host name
from: unlimited
to: unlicensed
The following features will become unavailable
* Up to 32GB of memory
* Up to 8-way SMP
When i click ok i get the following error:
An Error occurred when assigning the specified license key: License is not valid for this product.
the eval key was for VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.7 (supports VMware vCenter Server 5.1 only).
My ESXi host is running 5.1.0
I tried registering for a new key using a different email address and i get the same thing.
What could be causing this? And how do i fix it?