“Cannot decode the licensed features on the host before it is added to vCenter Server. You might be unable to assign the selected license, because of unsupported features in use or some features might become unavailable after you assign the license.”
That is the exact message I received this past weekend when I was trying to add my Lenovo M93p Tiny ESXi host(s) to my vCenter cluster.
A quick explanation is needed here. While I’m waiting for some networking gear to arrive from eBay, I’ve decided to configure my Lenovo M93p Tiny ESXi hosts together using my VMUG advantage license and install VCSA onto them. The goal is to build a lab/cluster at home and utilize all of the VCSA functionalities.
If you are just reading my post for the first time, read this for some further insight.
Anywho, for each of my three Lenovo M93p Tiny computers, I initially installed VMware vSphere 6.7 that I obtained from myVMware.com.
My hosts are using a very basic IP addresses. 192.168.1.250/251/252.
On ESXI01 (192.168.1.250), I started the process to install the VMware VCSA appliance on said host. When the VCSA configuration was complete, I made sure I had the appropriate license applied to VCSA and under license management.
When I would try to add my host(s) to VCSA, I would get the message that I posted at the top of this post.
“Cannot decode the licensed features on the host before it is added to vCenter Server. You might be unable to assign the selected license, because of unsupported features in use or some features might become unavailable after you assign the license.”
I couldn’t figure it out. Initially I thought this was a license issue but it didn’t make sense. When I installed VCSA on a clients production environment in the past, I never ran into this. Confused, I started searching Google for some suggestions.
Some results pointed to a time specific issue(NTP) or even license related. Both weren’t the case in my situation so I continued my search. Eventually I found something that was quite interesting regarding versions of ESXi and VCSA. The VCSA version cannot be older than the vSphere ESXi version.
This was my best bet as I recalled that my ESXi hosts were on version 6.7 while the VCSA appliance I was putting on was at 6.5. I configured my VCSA with the IP of 192.168.1.253 for the time being.
Why was I trying to put on an older version? Simply to learn and upgrade it. Try to mimic live production tasks and practice at home.
This afternoon I went ahead and downloaded from VMUG advantage the ISO for VMware ESXi 6.0 and VMware VCSA 6.5. This way I can install those, get VCSA setup and after a few days of playing with updates/patches, perform upgrades.
I’m writing this post because it was successful. The issue that I was initially experiencing was most likely due to the version difference.
I know this isn’t an overly technical post but I wanted to write this up in case I ever forget and have to reference this in the future or somebody else may run into this.
Lastly I’d like to recommend the VMware 70785 Upgrade Path and Interoperability page for referencing which versions of VMware products play nice. It helped me confirm that re-configuring my hosts for version 6.0 will play nice with VCSA 6.5.
Thanks for reading!
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