VMWARE virtual machine manual MAC Address configuration: Unable to power on the virtual machine due to MAC conflict with VMWARE's reserved MAC.
Recently, I was testing the backup and restore of virtual machines. I needed to restore a backup of a virtual machine to another ESXi server for testing purposes while keeping the MAC address of the virtual machine the same.
The original virtual machine was set to automatically generate a MAC address, starting with "00:0C:29." After restoring it to another ESXi server, I had to manually configure the MAC address of the virtual machine. However, when I entered the original MAC address, an error message appeared stating, "Cannot power on virtual machine. The Ethernet address is not allowed. It conflicts with the MAC address reserved by VMWARE."
The issue arises when you switch the MAC address configuration to manual, and the MAC address starts with "00:0C:29." This range of MAC addresses is reserved for automatic generation by ESXi, so even if you configure it correctly, an error occurs when trying to power on the virtual machine.
To resolve this, you can SSH into the ESXi server and navigate to "vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/virtual_machine_name." Then, use the vi editor to modify the .vmx file within that directory.
Locate the network adapter section, which is typically named ethernet0.addressType = "generated." Add a new line above it with the following entry: ethernet0.checkMACAddress = "false". Then, change the addressType to ethernet0.addressType = "static".
For configuring the MAC address, you can do that directly in the graphical interface.
最近在Commvault上要測試,把ESXI上備份的虛擬機,還原到其他台ESXI,看看還原出來的虛擬機會不會有問題。 所以就先去下找同版本的ESXI,裝在一台閒置的伺服器上,剛裝好,可以有60天的評估試用期,還原的時後都ok。 後來在還原其他台虛擬機時,出現了[Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.]的錯誤,很奇怪。 後來才發現,因為自己把免費版的序號輸入後,將ESXI從試用版轉換成免費版的授權,所以就會還原失敗,這失敗的訊息應該是來自VMWARE,不是Commvault的問題,後來就把ESXI重裝,繼續採用試用版授權,就可以還原了。