vSphere Essentials and VDDK

Hi all, I ran into an error when trying to access a virtual disk on an ESXi 6.5 with Essentials license (please note - plain Essentials, not Essentials Plus).

I'm using VDDK 5.5.5 to connect to the host directly, the host is not managed by vCenter.

When trying to "VixDiskLib_Open", I get this:

Debug: VixDiskLibVim: Failed to load license manager.
Info: Remote connection established. Supported transport modes: file:san:hotadd:nbdssl:nbd
Debug: VixDiskLib: VixDiskLib_OpenEx: Open a disk.
Debug: VixDiskLibVim: VixDiskLibVim_GetNfcTicket: Get NFC ticket for [Local SATA 1T] DSL test/DSL test.vmdk.
Warning: VixDiskLibVim: Unacceptable server edition esx.essentials.cpuPackage
Debug: VixDiskLibVim: ESX/ESXi host is not licensed to use this feature.
Debug: VixDiskLib: Error occurred when obtaining NFC ticket for: [Local SATA 1T] DSL test/DSL test.vmdk. Error 16064 at 1456.
Error: The host is not licensed for this feature

It seems that the server edition is properly detected (esx.essentials.cpuPackage) but I'm not able to obtain NFC ticket anyway. When I update the host license to ESXi standard, everything works.

AFAIK it should be possible to use VDDK with Essentials edition. Is this correct?

Any suggestions? Thx in advance!