VMware inventory fails on hosts using free ESXi licenses

The Flexera Inventory Beacon collects virtual machine and host data by querying the vSphere Web Services API. Although the Free VMware ESXi (vSphere Hypervisor) license allows hosting virtual machines, it restricts the required API functionality for third-party tools to gather inventory. Consequently, inventory fails even when initial discovery appears successful.

The discovery phase may appear successful because basic connectivity and version identification do not require restricted API calls. In the Discovery.log, you will see:

[.DiscoveryTaskExecutor|PropertyDisco] [INFO ] Completed VMware discovery for device '192.0.2.1': Name 'VMware ESXi', Port '443', Protocol 'https', Version '6.0.0', ApiType 'HostAgent', ApiVersion '6.0'

The inventory task will fail soon after. In the VMWareInventory.log, you will see:

[.VirtualizationVisitor|Async] [INFO ] Result of type 'TaskType_V12nInventory' on target '192.0.2.1':

<TaskStatus Result="Failed" Type="VirtualInventory" Status="VMwareInfrastructureInventoryFailed" Duration="58.28" Credential="Your_VMWare_Server" StartDateTime="2025-12-18T12:00:00"/>

Solution

Troubleshooting and verification

Enable trace for confirmation
To verify this is a licensing restriction and not another error:

Enable etdp trace on the Beacon for these components:

+Inventory/Vmware
+Scheduling/RemoteExecution
+GSOAP

Review the trace files for the following SOAP Fault message:

(GSoap): (0x082FAE90) SOAP Fault "Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation."

Learn more

ESXi license limitations

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Support Hub

Product

Flexera One

Solution Area

IT Asset Management

Also Applies To

Flexera One;FlexNet Manager Suite

Deployment type

Cloud;On-premises

Visibility

Guest

URL Name

VMware-Inventory-Fails-on-Hosts-Using-Free-ESXi-Licenses