I have just upgraded to 5.1 from 4.1, my licenses says unlimited cores per CPU, however whenever I configure a VM (Windows 2008 R2, or 2012) for 2 CPUS, and 12 cores each (my esx host has 24 cores available) I receive a message saying "Virtual Machine has 24 virtual CPUs, but the host only supports 8. The number of virtual CPUs may be limited by the guest OS selcted for the virtual machine or by the licensing for the host" , my license is "VMWare vSphere 5 Essentials Plus (Unlimited cores per CPU)" .
My host needs to use at least 16 cores, this VM envinroment is manly being used for HA, with both boxes having at 24 cores.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.