If you remember about 6 months ago I wrote an article about the fact that hot add of any kind of virtual hardware in the free free version of ESXi. I thought I would revisit the problems I had now that Update 1 was released last week.

The host has been upgraded to ESX4i Update 1

I took a Windows 2008 Guest OS.

Firstly, I noticed - CPU Hot plug was not available. Regarding memory Hot Add - I did have the option to turn on / off.

I powered on the machine. And started my journey again to add a new hard disk to the VM while it was powered on.

Edit Settings -> Add -> yada yada yada….. (you know the drill…)

I did not receive any errors

And Lo and Behold:

Tried the same with a second NIC

And Lo and Behold:

 

Last thing I tried - (you remember the memory/CPU hot-add from before.

This is not a feature that is offered with the free version of ESXi - but what the heck - the option was there, so I figured I would try it.

And I got shot down - as expected:

The questions I asked my previous article were:

1. The error message of course is not very well phrased - and I would love to know what "need have have" is?
2. Why in heaven's name would you take away the most basic functionality that has been in every single VMware product (besides Player) for the past 5 years? VMware? Please tell me that was a mistake?

So as you can see, the first has been fixed, and William Shakespeare will no longer be turning over in his grave.

Regarding the second one, I guess VMware realized the mistake, and have remedied the situation that arose with ESX4i. Thank you for correcting the problem

And of course - the removal of the above mentioned hardware (HD and NIC) works on a live machine as well.

Hope you enjoyed the ride!