VMware 5 Host Profiles prompts for MAC address

The good news is, host profiles in VMware 5 have been improved significantly. The bad news is, they still suck.

When trying to apply a host profile to a server, you may be prompted for a MAC address.

Wow, a bug in VMware host profiles! Who’d thought! At least it isn’t a crippling like the vSphere 4 “swap the vmkernel IP addresses around” bug.

Anyway, you should need to enter a MAC address every time you want to apply a host profile. That’s ludicrous. To get around this, go to the Host Profiles console (Home > Host Profiles).

Right-click on your Host Profile and click Edit Profile.

Navigate to the Determine how MAC address for vmknic should be decided setting

Select User must explicitly choose the policy option, then click OK.

If you have a separate port for VMotion, Fault Tolerance, management traffic, iSCSI, you will have to repeat this step for each of those port groups.

Done! Now remember to do this every time you create a host profile.