assignment validation for evaluation license

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VMware vCenter Server Licensing Options

VMware is one of the leading virtualization vendors today. The number of customers using VMware vSphere is growing every day. There are different license editions in VMware vSphere, and new VMware users should know about them to choose the license that is optimal for their organization and their needs. This blog post covers VMware vCenter licensing to clarify vCenter Server licensing options and understand the differences between licenses.

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General vCenter Server Licensing Information

In the blog post about Free ESXi , we explained how to use the free ESXi license for the VMware vSphere hypervisor. Yes, you can use a free license on a standalone ESXi host but with significant limitations. These limitations affect data backup methods because special APIs cannot be used. Free ESXi cannot be managed by the vCenter Server.

If you use paid licenses, you will need to buy a VMware vSphere license that covers the appropriate number of ESXi hosts and a vCenter Server license. The VMware vSphere license allows you to use vCenter Server to manage vSphere environments, including centralized ESXi hosts. VMware vCenter Server allows you to manage ESXi hosts, virtual machines, and other items in vSphere from a single interface. ESXi hosts are licensed with vSphere licenses on a per-processor basis, and vCenter is licensed on a per-instance basis. ESXi licensing allows you to run ESXi in the following modes: trial, free, and VMware vSphere license of the appropriate paid edition.

VMware vCenter Licensing

VMware vCenter can run in the evaluation (trial) mode and licensed mode. The trial mode for vSphere and vCenter is 60 days. During the trial period, you can use all the features in the top license edition (vSphere Enterprise Plus and vCenter Server Standard). If you assign a license for vCenter, you can switch back to the evaluation mode within 60 days from installing the vCenter Server. The evaluation license expires after 60 days. For example, if you install vCenter and use vCenter in the evaluation mode for 30 days, then buy and assign the license, you have 30 days remaining during which you can switch from the licensed mode to the evaluation mode. When the evaluation license expires, and there is no other license, all ESXi hosts added to vCenter inventory are disconnected from vCenter. If you assign a vCenter Server license after the evaluation license expires, ESXi hosts that were added to vCenter previously are reconnected to vCenter Server automatically.

A license key provided for VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server is a 25-character alphanumeric string that is not tied to hardware. A license key contains encrypted information about the product edition and doesn’t contain any server-specific information. If you have a vCenter Server, it is recommended that you assign vSphere licenses for ESXi hosts from the web interface of vCenter. VMware vSphere licenses and vCenter licenses have no time limitation on using the appropriate VMware products. There’s no limit on the number of running VMs.

VMware vCenter Server Editions

There are three editions of VMware vCenter 7.0 depending on the used license: vCenter Server for Essentials, vCenter Server Foundation, and vCenter Server Standard. Let’s explore each edition in more detail.

vCenter Server for Essentials supports up to 3 ESXi hosts that have vSphere Essentials and Essential Plus licenses. This edition is intended for use by organizations that have small virtual environments and is a good solution for small/medium businesses. This vCenter license is included in VMware vSphere Essential and Essential Plus kits (that are all-in-one solutions), unlike vSphere Standard and vSphere Enterprise licenses. VMware vMotion and vSphere High Availability are not available with vSphere Essential. You can create datacenters and clusters, but VMs can be migrated only when powered off (no live migration). If you use vSphere Essential Plus and vCenter Server for Essentials, VM live migration with vMotion and High Availability are available.

vCenter Server Foundation manages up to 4 ESXi hosts that have vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus, and VMware vCloud Suite licenses. vCenter Server Foundation is sold as a separate license on a per-instance basis. There is no vRealize Orchestrator, vCenter Server High Availability, Enhanced Linked Mode, or vCenter Server Migration Tool. VMware vCenter Server Foundation is intended primarily for smaller environments.

vCenter Server Standard supports an unlimited number of ESXi hosts that are licensed with vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus, and vCloud Suite licenses. The VMware vCenter Server Standard license contains all available vCenter features. This is the top edition of vCenter. You can use vRealize Orchestrator to automate key tasks, vCenter Server High Availability, Enhanced Linked Mode, and the vCenter Server Migration Tool. The VMware vCenter Server Standard license is sold separately from the VMware vSphere license (on a per-instance basis).

vCenter Upgrade

Customers can always pay and upgrade an existing license of vSphere and vCenter to a higher edition. In case of an upgrade, a new license key is issued, and the old (original) key is deactivated. You should replace the existing license with a new one. If you upgrade vCenter Server to a newer version that starts with the same number, your license is preserved, and vCenter continues to work with the assigned license (for example, if you upgrade vCenter 6.0 to 6.7). If you upgrade vCenter to a major version that starts with a different number, the evaluation mode restarts, and you need to assign a new license (for example, if you upgrade vCenter 6.7 to vCenter 7.0). Keep in mind that VMware vCenter 7.0 can manage ESXi 7.0, ESXi 6.5, and ESXi 6.7 hosts but cannot manage ESXi 6.0 or hosts of earlier versions. VMware vCenter 6.7 cannot manage ESXi 7.0 hosts.

How to Assign a License for vCenter

Let’s look at how to assign a VMware server license for vCenter. The workflow of assigning a license for vCenter 6.7 and vCenter 7.0 is similar. You should assign a vCenter license before the trial period expires.

Open a web browser and open VMware vSphere Client by entering the IP address of your vCenter Server. Lon in to vCenter as an administrator or other user that has the Global.Licenses privilege.

Go to the Configuration tab, and click Licensing in the Settings section to configure vCenter Server licensing.

On the Licensing page, you see the current license assigned to your vCenter, such as an Evaluation license or other license. You can also see information about the product, number of used instances, license expiration, and licensed features.

In order to assign a license, click the ASSIGN LICENSE button.

A new window opens in the web interface of VMware vSphere Client.

In order to add a new license, click NEW LICENSE , enter your license key, and define a custom license name for convenience. The license name is displayed in the list of available licenses in vCenter. On the screenshot below, you can see that we have entered a license key for VMware vCenter Server 6 Standard (Instances). Click the (i) icon to see the features that are available for your license. If the license is valid, you should see the appropriate message in the Assignment Validation section at the bottom of the window. Hit OK to save the settings.

Now you can go to the Existing licenses tab and verify that your license has been assigned. On this page, you can see all the licenses that you have added to your vCenter Server before. In our example, 60 days have passed since the installation of vCenter, and the Evaluation license is inactive. You can select any available license in this list, then hit OK to apply this license, save settings, and close the Assign License window.

This blog post has covered VMware vCenter Server licensing to understand how vCenter is licensed and the differences between vCenter editions. Organizations having small virtual environments might choose vCenter Server for Essentials or vCenter Server Foundation. Organizations having large virtual environments, including a large number of ESXi hosts with higher demands such as clustering, high availability, fault tolerance, and live migration, should consider using the VMware vCenter Server Standard license that includes all available features.

Even if your VMs run in a High Availability cluster, you must remember to protect your VMs and back them up. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a universal data protection solution that supports VMware vSphere 7.0 with features designed specifically to improve backup performance and simplify data protection administration of VMware vSphere VMs. In addition to VMware vSphere, the solution supports data protection for other virtual, cloud, physical and SaaS platforms.

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How to Update an Expired vCenter Server License

By: Author Melissa Palmer

Posted on Last updated: January 8, 2021

Sometimes we are in a hurry when installing a vSphere environment and forget little things like entering license keys, especially the vCenter license key.  

Remember, the vCenter license that comes with VMware vSphere, the vCenter Server evaluation license, lasts 60 days, as do the other VMware evaluation licenses.  This means your vCenter server license expires on day 61 if you forgot to enter the vCenter license key at the time of deployment.

Hopefully we only forget to update our vSphere licenses in development and test environments, since it is in the have verification testing for plans for production environments, right?  

It should be as easy as just grabbing the vCenter license key and plopping it in to VMware vCenter, but sometimes it is not.  I am going to show you one of the most common issues I have seen when updating and expired VMware vCenter server license and how to fix it.  This lesson also applies to updating or assigning ESXi licenses, or vSAN licenses.

The “There are Expired or Expiring licenses in Your Inventory” vCenter Message

vCenter is really good at letting you know that your licence is going to expire.  If you see this message, it is time to act before your license actually expires.

When your licence expires, your hosts will disconnect to vCenter and you won’t be able to do anything.  VMs will continue to run, but you won’t be able to create new VMs or reboot or power on VMs.

How to Reset a VMware vCenter Evaluation License

One of the most common questions when dealing with an expired vCenter license is “How do I reset a vCenter evaluation license?”.  Unfortunately, the answer is you cannot.  Once your 60 day evaluation license has expired you have two options:

• Enter a valid license key from VMware into vCenter, which this article shows you how to do.
• Build a new vCenter and add your hosts to it.  This will give you another 60 day evaluation period.

There is not an easy way to get around the evaluation license other than rebuilding vCenter.  Once again, it is important to make sure you always enter a valid license into vCenter for any production environment!

How to Update an Expired License in vSphere 7 (vSphere Client) – Video

If you are looking to update an expired license in vSphere 7, or even vSphere 6.x and higher, check out this video on updating licenses in the vSphere client:

It covers updating and assigning vCenter, ESXi, and vSAN licenses.

Here are some additional instructions for adding a vCenter licence:

How to Update a VMware License in the vSphere Client  – Current Client 

How to Update an Expired VMware vSphere License in the vSphere Web Client  – Flash Web Client (Deprecated)

Adding a vCenter License, a Two Step Process

There are two components when you are adding a license like the vCenter license to VMware vSphere.  First, you must add the license to vCenter server.  Then, you assign it to an asset, in this case vCenter itself.

Now, let’s take a look at how to do these two things.

Adding a vCenter License

I am sure you have seen this screen before, but look what happened when I tried to copy and paste my complete vCenter license key in!  It did not make it.  This can be frustrating since if you forgot to put your key in, chances are things are not working in your environment very well at all at the moment.  Take a deep breath.

Do you know how I got to the screen to enter the vCenter license?  No?  Right click your vCenter in the left Navigator pane, and select Assign License…  In fact you can also do this on your ESXi hosts to assign their VMware licenses.

Now, back to your vCenter server license key.  I can only see the first five characters I pasted in, and I could not add the license key to vCenter.  If you see this issue, do not panic.  There is still a way to get that key into vCenter.

Why bother you ask?  Well, once the vCenter Server license has expired you will be able to do much.  While things will still “work” to some extent, there are many things you will not be able to do.  

Say goodbye to adding hosts to your inventory.  If your ESXi host licenses are also expired, then you will really be in trouble.  Remember, the vCenter evaluation license and the VMware ESXi evaluation license only last 60 days .  You will begin to have problems on day 61.

For now, we are going to focus on updating the vCenter Server license.  To enter your vCenter Server license, you must type out each and every character.  Copy and pasting will not work.  

After you see all of the characters represented, click Add License Keys.  Do not just click Next!

Assigning a vCenter License

After you see a message that the key has been added successfully, go ahead and click Next.  You can then Assign your license to your vCenter server and you are off to the races!  

In the Product field, you will see a radio button next to the license key you just entered.  The green checkbox next to the name of your vCenter tells you you are all set.

Remember, ESXi licenses and vCenter Server licenses are not the same thing.  Ensure you have the license key for vCenter Server Standard, not an ESXi license key.  They are different even though they both have a 60 day evaluation period.  

Now, you can enjoy your fully operational vCenter, and follow the same process to enjoy fully licensed ESXi hosts.

Both vCenter and ESXi licenses are critical to the smooth operation of a vSphere environment.  I strongly suggest verifying licenses as part of the verification and testing process before your production environment is live.

Need to update your vSphere Licenses?  No matter what version of vSphere you are running, here is how: How to Update a VMware License in the vSphere Client (HTML5 Client) How to Update an Expired VMware vSphere License in the vSphere Web Client (Flash Client) How to Update an Expired vCenter Server License in the C# Client (Thick Client)

If you are using the VMware vSphere web client, and need to add a license, be sure to take a look at this article .  

Remember, the C# client has gone away.  If you want to learn more about the newest vSphere client for accessing hosts directly based on HTML5, be sure to look at my favorite feature of it.  

Always remember to add your licenses to VMware vSphere to avoid problems down the road!

Melissa is an Independent Technology Analyst & Content Creator, focused on IT infrastructure and information security.  She is a VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX-236) and has spent her career focused on the full IT infrastructure stack.

Handling Tanzu License Assignment and Expiration in vSphere 7.0 Update 3

Article id: 331342, updated on:, issue/introduction.

• Insufficient License Capacity - The Tanzu license cannot be assigned to the Supervisor Cluster if the license key capacity is not sufficient to entitle the entire supervisor cluster. 
• Tanzu License Expiration - When a Tanzu license key expires, you cannot upgrade, or scale the Supervisor Cluster as well as create new workloads, impacting the normal operation of your vSphere with Tanzu environment. 

License Assignment to Supervisor Cluster: 

• Upon the configuration of a vSphere Cluster as a Supervisor Cluster, a 60-day built-in evaluation period is enabled, allowing you as a vSphere administrator to use the full set of capabilities of the cluster. Any use of these evaluation capabilities is subject to the terms applicable to evaluation licenses in the VMware End User License Agreement available at  https://www.vmware.com/download/eula.html . When the   60 day evaluation period expires or a valid Tanzu edition license expires,  you must assign a Tanzu edition license to the Supervisor Cluster. It is important to note here that the product allows only one license key to be assigned to a Supervisor Cluster.  This means that a single Tanzu license key must have sufficient license key capacity to entitle the full cluster. If not, the product does not allow the license key to be assigned to the Supervisor Cluster. 

For example, let us say Supervisor Cluster  site-cluster-1 , is consuming 50 units capacity. As a vSphere administrator, you attempt to assign license key  XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXYY , which has capacity of 35 units. The system prior to vSphere 7.0 U3 does not allow you to assign the license to this Supervisor Cluster because of 15 unit of insufficient capacity.  

• Changes in vSphere 7.0 U3
• Tanzu License Expiration

When a Tanzu edition license assigned to a Supervisor Cluster expires, license expiration rules come into effect. As a vSphere administrator, you cannot create new workloads on the Supervisor Cluster, scale the Supervisor Cluster, or updated it with new Kubernetes versions. You will be able to restore the normal operations after you assign the cluster a valid Tanzu license.

• License Compliance
• The above changes introduced in the vSphere 7.0 U3 are intended to provide you as a vSphere administrator with more flexibility to run the operations in a seamless way without any challenges due to the license management. However, it is very important to always ensure that, customers have properly licensed the Tanzu software that they are using. As a vSphere administrator, you must ensure that the  total license key usage across all the Supervisor Clusters does not exceed the total capacity of all the Tanzu license keys in the License inventory . 
• To check your total usage across all Supervisor Cluster, in the vSphere Client, navigate to  Administration → Licensing → Licenses → Assets tab . You can find the usage for each Supervisor Cluster in the Usage column. The column total is your total usage across all Supervisor Clusters. 

Additional Information

• When I attempt to assign a license to a cluster, I get the message - "License capacity is insufficient". I have procured sufficient Tanzu license capacity for our cluster spread across multiple license keys. I am unable to add the second license key to the cluster.
• When I attempt to assign a license key to the cluster, - License capacity is insufficient". However, I am able to use the product normally without any operational issues. Does it mean that I don't need to procure the deficit license capacity?
• The Licensing management screen is showing that the usage of my Supervisor Cluster exceeds the assigned license capacity. I have procured the required license quantity, but the system does not allow me to assign the additional license key to the Supervisor Cluster. How do I get rid of the Assignment Validation message?
• As a vSphere Administrator, how can I verify if I am satisfying the Tanzu License Compliance?

Changing the Avi Load Balancer license tier and how to fix the validation errors

I've been playing around with vSphere with Tanzu for a while, both with and without NSX-T. Initially the no-NSX-T load balancer option was to use a pre-built HAProxy appliance provided by VMware. That worked, and still does, but when vSphere 7.0 U2 released we got the option to use the NSX Advanced Load Balancer (ALB), formerly known as Avi Vantage which in many ways are more powerful, and it also comes with an UI that HAProxy doesn't have.

The NSX Advanced Load Balancer comes in different editions, and after deploying the Avi controller the platform will use an evaluation license of the Enterprise edition which has a lot more features available than the Essentials license that comes with Tanzu Basic and Standard.

Many of us seems to hold off on changing/adding the correct license as we're eager to test out the functionality, but in the case of the Avi Load Balancer this can lead to a lot more work than doing it up front!

TLDR: Change the Avi license to Essentials BEFORE enabling Workload Management/Tanzu, and (optionally) add a Default gateway in Avi to be able to get traffic from your SE's back to your client (if they're not connected to the front-end network)

Avi setup and the license tiers

I wrote a blog post about my Avi setup here , but what I didn't do in my initial testing (even though I mention it in my blog post...), and I suspect this also applies to others, was to change the licensing from the Enterprise eval/trial to Essentials.

Oftentimes we're so eager to test functionality, and as most products, including vSphere, comes with an evaluation license we push back on the licensing bit until we're forced to..

For a lab environment that's brought up and teared down within the eval period, we might not get notified at all, and that's why I first encountered this when helping a customer finalizing their Tanzu production environment.

Tanzu Basic and Standard entitles the use of the Essentials edition

For those running Tanzu Basic and Standard licenses the ALB edition included is Essentials which has a few implications on the functionality of the Load Balancer and it's configuration. I.e. there's only the Legacy HA mode available, the LB is L4 only etc

A list of the features available in the different editions can be found here

This leads to errors when we try to change the license after Workload Management/Tanzu has created SE's, Virtual Services etc since the Controller starts out at the Enterprise license level which has defaults not compliant with the Essentials edition. (Note, this isn't specific to Tanzu enablement, any configuration of Virtual Services etc with the defaults of the Enterprise edition would lead to these problems)

Before looking at what we'll need to do to change the license tier after enabling Tanzu, let's look at how to do it before as instructed in the documentation

Changing the license before Tanzu enablement

If we read the VMware documentation we're instructed to add the Essentials license after the initial configuration of the controller (i.e. before assigning a certificate, configuring the SE group and the Virtual/Frontend network).

As per the documentation we're instructed to upload the Essentials license.

The thing is that the Essentials license isn't something we add, it's already in the controller. What we need to is to change the license tier from the Enterprise edition to the Essentials edition

To change license we'll go to the Administration menu, select the Settings tab and the Licensing option. Click the cog icon in the heading and select the Essentials license

If we follow this we are almost done after the license change, but there's one important thing that is not covered in the documentation (at least I haven't found it), and that is the routing for the Service Engine(s) besides for the Workload Management network route.

If your client(s) does not sit on the Service Engine Frontend network, the SE(s) might have an issue with knowing where to return traffic to clients that are connecting.

In Enterprise there is a Auto Gateway setting which will take care of this, but that's not available in the Essentials edition. Therefore we need to add static routes not only for the Workload network (which is covered by the documentation ), but also for the client networks.

In my case I've added a Default gateway by adding a Static Route of 0.0.0.0/0 through the gateway on the frontend network my SE's are connected to

And that's it, we can now continue with configuring and preparing Avi for Workload Management/Tanzu with the correct license edition.

Changing the license after Tanzu enablement

So, what happens if we try to change the license after having configured and tested Tanzu?

The Config validation failed error message instructs us to run an API or a CLI command to validate and check the configuration. Let's run it through the CLI. This is also described in the Avi documentation

This is the result in my environment with a Tanzu cluster configured and integrated with the Avi Load Balancer. I've also created a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster in a namespace called ns-13

As we can see there are quite a few configurations that are not supported. Both the Service Engine group, Pool and Virtual Service configurations needs to be amended as well as the SSL certificate.

Configuration changes

A BIG WARNING before we continue: I do not know if these changes affects other parts of the platform, be it Tanzu or Avi, so use at your own risk and take a backup of the current configuration before performing any changes

Some of these can be changed in the UI while others needs to be changed through the CLI.

Service Engine group changes

These settings can be changed from the Basic Settings of the Service Engine Group

Note that changes to the Service Enginge group (like HA mode) is not allowed while there's Virtual Services running on it. To be able to change I've had to disable the Virtual Service(s), change the settings, and re-enable the service(s).

Field ServiceEngineGroup.ha_mode cannot have HA_MODE_SHARED as its value in ESSENTIALS license tier. Allowed value(s): HA_MODE_LEGACY_ACTIVE_STANDBY.

Set the HA mode to Active/Standby (Legacy HA)

HA monitoring on standy

Field ServiceEngineGroup.hm_on_standby cannot have True as its value in ESSENTIALS license tier. Allowed value: False.

Deselect the Health Monitoring on Standby SE(s)

Memory cache

Field ServiceEngineGroup.app_cache_percent cannot have 10 as its value in ESSENTIALS license tier. Allowed value: 0.

Set the Memory for Caching setting to 0 (defaults to 10%)

Pool changes

This setting can be changed from the individual Pool Advanced settings. Note that we need to change it for every Pool that is created

Ramp duration

Field Pool.connection_ramp_duration cannot have 10 as its value in ESSENTIALS license tier. Allowed value: 0.

Set the Connection Ramp to 0 (defaults to 10)

Virtual Service config change

Some of these settings must be done from the CLI/API.

Auto gateway

Field VirtualService.enable_autogw cannot have True as its value in ESSENTIALS license tier. Allowed value: False

This setting can be changed from the Advanced settings of each Virtual Service. Note that we need to change it for every VS that is created

Deselect the Auto Gateway setting

Note that when we remove the Auto Gateway feature our virtual services might no longer be accessible!

I struggled a while to understand what happened, since everything seems up and running both in vCenter/Workload Mgmt and in Avi.

If we take a look at the tool tip on the setting we get a clue

Turns out that when this is disabled, our SE's won't know where to send the return traffic to the clients trying to access our Kubernetes environment on the frontend network if the clients are not on the same network.

To fix this we need to add a static route for the SE's to use. In my case I've added a Default route which routes through the front end GW, but essentially I guess I could have added specific routes for all client networks applicable.

Note that to configure a Default gateway, create a new Static route and enter 0.0.0.0/0 as the subnet with a corresponding next hop, the Default Gateway text was set by the controller itself. (This default gw would also make the Static route for the Workload network unnecessary)

Learning log policy change

Field VirtualService.analytics_policy.learning_log_policy cannot be set in ESSENTIALS license tier

NOTE! This warning came only AFTER changing the Auto Gateway setting

So far, I've only been able to change this through the CLI (the API would also work I'd imagine)

From the shell navigate to the Virtual Service you need to change (tab completion is your friend here) with the configure virtualservice <vs-name> command

Here we get an output of the current configuration, and we can see that the Analytics policy has a learning log policy enabled.

As per the validation message the learning_log_policy cannot be set so we'll remove it. Easiest way of doing this is to navigate in to the analyticspolicy and run the no learning_log_policy command

With the learning log policy removed we can save the configuration, and then do a save of the Virtual service with two save commands. This will output the new configuration, and we can verify that the learning log policy is gone

Cert changes

Ocsp config change.

Field SSLKeyAndCertificate.ocsp_config cannot be set in ESSENTIALS license tier.

This setting we'll also change from the CLI so head over to the shell and navigate to the certificate with the configure SSLKeyAndCertificate <cert-name> command. This will list the current configuration

Towards the end of the output we can see the current OCSP config

Again, we'll need to remove this config so we'll use the no ocsp_config command. This should output the new configuration, and at the top it should mention that the OCSP config has been removed

Now, let's save the configuration. This should output the cert config and we can again verify that the OCSP config has been removed

Verify config changes

Now with all of these changes done we can run a new audit of the configuration and hopefully it should pass so we can go ahead and change the license level

With a successful audit we can go ahead and change the license. This can be done in the UI, or we can perform it directly from the CLI from the configure systemconfiguration path with the default_license_tier essentials command

Don't forget to save the configuration

And for reference we can verify the same in the UI

Does the Avi version matter?

For reference I initially suspected that the issue with changing licenses had to do with the version of the Avi platform. Because most of the documentation up until now has been done on 20.1.3, but I've been running 20.1.5.

I have tested on both 20.1.3, 20.1.5 and 20.1.6, and all of these versions have issues with changing license after Workload enablement.

Note that there might be slight differences in how to change the license between the versions and patch levels (earlier versions had to use the CLI). There's also stuff that cannot be done in the UI when changing to the Essentials license, i.e. some certificate stuff, again with differences between the versions.

The short story here is to change the license edition before doing any configuration and enablement of Avi/Tanzu/Workload Management/etc. Oh, and RTFM! It is listed as a step early on in the documentation (albeit the steps were not entirely correct).

Although it's mentioned in the documentation I do wish it was clearer or at least the consequenses was listed. Changing the license after Tanzu enablement means downtime to your services, and IMO a license change shouldn't have to require that. At least there should be some backend automation for this, i.e. the controller knows what to change the settings to by default and asks the user if that should be done (with a warning of what will change) when changing the license.

Thanks for reading and reach out if you have any questions or comments

Related Posts

• vSphere With Tanzu - Enable Workload Management in vSphere 7 update 3 — September 3, 2022
• vSphere with Tanzu - NSX Advanced Load Balancer 22.1 — September 2, 2022
• Integrate NSX Advanced Load Balancer with Kubernetes — January 4, 2022
• Avi LB - Remove Orphaned Pools and Policysets — September 18, 2021
• VMware Tanzu - Deploying the Advanced Load Balancer — June 14, 2021

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what vSAN License Includes?

johndoeman1010 Aug 14, 2014 09:45 AM

Vikas Shitole Aug 14, 2014 10:01 AM

a_p_ Aug 14, 2014 10:06 AM

CL4PTP Oct 10, 2014 04:14 PM

A_p_ oct 10, 2014 08:33 pm, cl4ptp oct 10, 2014 08:45 pm, a_p_ oct 10, 2014 09:12 pm, cl4ptp oct 10, 2014 11:24 pm, cl4ptp oct 14, 2014 01:04 pm.

jkoebrunner Oct 15, 2014 10:00 AM

Cl4ptp oct 16, 2014 02:07 pm, jkoebrunner oct 16, 2014 06:03 pm, cl4ptp oct 16, 2014 06:51 pm, jkoebrunner oct 16, 2014 07:04 pm.

Rayna Stankova Oct 17, 2014 12:02 PM

Cl4ptp oct 17, 2014 12:48 pm, rayna stankova oct 17, 2014 01:09 pm, jkoebrunner oct 20, 2014 09:52 am, cl4ptp oct 28, 2014 08:48 pm.

lcuky Nov 09, 2020 05:03 AM

ArildS May 13, 2022 01:46 PM

1.  what vsan license includes.

i want to purchase 3 servers to create a vSAN Cluster, each server has 2 cpu's. so im buying 6 vSAN Licenses.

does it includes vSphere and vCenter License or i need  to purchase those also?

2.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Licensing for Virtual SAN

When you enable Virtual SAN on a cluster, you must assign the cluster an appropriate Virtual SAN license before the 60-day evaluation period expires.

License capacity and usage for Virtual SAN

Similar to vSphere licenses, Virtual SAN licenses also have per CPU capacity. When you assign a Virtual SAN license to a cluster, the amount of license capacity that is used equals the total number of CPUs in the hosts that participate in the cluster. For example, if you have a Virtual SAN cluster that contains 4 hosts with 8 CPUs each, you need to assign the cluster a Virtual SAN license with a minimum capacity of 32 CPUs.

The license usage of the Virtual SAN cluster is recalculated and updated when:

• You assign a new license key to the Virtual SAN cluster
• You add a new host to the Virtual SAN cluster
• A host is removed from the cluster
• The total number of CPUs in a cluster changes

You must maintain the Virtual SAN clusters in compliance with the Virtual SAN licensing model. The total number of CPUs of all hosts in the cluster must not exceed the capacity of the Virtual SAN license that is assigned to the cluster.

As per me, you need to purchase vCenter/ESXi licenses separately.

Refer: VMware KB: vSphere 5.5 Virtual SAN requirements

3.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Welcome to the Community,

VSAN is an Add-On/Feature, and has to be license in addition to the vSphere licenses (i.e. vCenter Server and CPU licenses). It however contains a "vSphere Distribute Switch" license, so you don't need to purchase Enterprise Plus licenses for the ESXi hosts. see e.g. http://www.virten.net/2014/03/vmware-virtual-san-licensing-and-pricing/

4.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

We've went through and purchased and applied our VSAN license but when we try to apply our Vsphere license (bring it out of evaluation mode), it won't let us because we are using VDS.  Since it is included with VSAN, why are we receiving this error?

5.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Do you receive an error message complaining about features being used which are not included in the vSphere license? I'd actually consider this a bug, and suggest that you open a support case with VMware.

6.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Yes we are receiving an error message complaining about features. We have opened several tickets but so far it has been 4 frustrating hours of the Licensing and Technical team telling us that VDS isn't included in VSAN.  :smileyangry: We are waiting to hear back from the VSAN Sales Lead to confirm that VDS is included with VSAN.  Maybe then we can make some progress.

Thanks for the reply and hope.

7.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Did you send them the link to VMware Virtual SAN Now Available with shows the VDS in the Pricing an Packing table and also states:

"... All editions feature the complete set of Virtual SAN capabilities – data persistency, read/write caching, storage policy based management, etc. – and include the vSphere Distributed Switch..."

8.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Well I'm glad you asked because I wasn't going to bring it up. We were actually told on the phone by a licensing department supervisor that this blog post and another we had found were incorrect.  Our jaws dropped trying to comprehend this response.

9.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

I just heard back from VMWare and they are still denying that VSAN comes with VDS even though its very clear from their website that " All editions feature the complete set of Virtual SAN capabilities – data persistency, read/write caching, storage policy based management, etc. – and include the vSphere Distributed Switch. This means that customers can take advantage of simplified network management of vSphere Distributed Switch for their Virtual SAN storage regardless of the underlying vSphere edition they use. "

I'm not sure how far up the food chain I am going to have to fight to get this taken care of but if there is a better (easier) route to take, I would really appreciate hearing it.  I am open to any suggestions.

10.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

We had the same problem.VSAN definitely includes the distributed vSwitch (we use Essentials Pluslicense + VSAN + distributed vSwitch).

Solution: you have to delete the distributed vSwitch, add the vSphere license (without deleting the distributed vSwitch this would fail if using any other license than Enterprise+), add the VSAN license and reconfigure the distributed vSwitch.

BR Johannes

11.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

It looks like VMWare has finally came to its senses but we aren't quite through the mess yet.  In order to comply with VMWare licensing, we had been migrating all of our servers over to the new Vhosts while in the evaluation mode.  So now we have all of our production servers on this cluster that is using VSAN + VDS.  I'm crossing my fingers that there is a bug fix being worked on OR a way for an engineer to do some magic through the CLI to get this corrected.  How disrupting and risky is it going to be to our VSAN Datastore to remove the VDS that our VSAN uses?

12.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

We had to migrate the VMkernel adapters and portgroups from the distributed to a standard vSwitch on each host.

Then we deleted the dvSwitch, added the vSphere license, then added the VSAN license and finally recreated the distributed vSwitch.

I know this is painful but at the moment I have no other workaround. Open for ideas...

13.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Did you have to take down the whole cluster to do this?  If so, could we just put all 3 hosts in maintenance mode, remove the VDS then re-license and recreate the VDS without having to create the standard vSwitches?  Our managment network is on a standard vSwitch.

If you didn't have to take the whole cluster down, were you able to put 1 host at a time into maintenance mode and remove it from the portgroup and place them onto a vSwitch, and then rinse and repeat for the others?

Thank you for your help.  You have been the one person I have found that has actually ran into this same issue.  Hopefully this thread can help prevent some of this pain from happening to others.  Who would have thought something as innocuous as the order you apply your licensing could become such a burden.

14.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

If you have the possibility to shutdown the whole VSAN cluster, then I would do so (depends if your vCenter is running on VSAN).

If not, then put each host after the other into maintenance mode ("ensure access" mode) and change the VSAN - VMkernel to the Standard vSwitch.

You could also do a live migration of the VSAN VMKernel from the distributed to the standard vswitch - I think there will be only a short network outage when migrating a VMKernel.

Yes I fully agree - this is a stupid bug. It happened once to us, now we know to activate the vSphere license before creating a distributed switch in combination with VSAN.

We also leave the Mgmt and VSAN VMkernels on seperate NICs/vSwitches and not on the distributed vSwitch - but we use 1G NICs.

15.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

The workaround in this case is to remove the host from the switch (the VDS shouldn't be in use ), assign the license which edition doesn't include the feature VDS e.g. Essential or Essential Plus and add again in the virtual switch - the feature is allowed because of the vSAN configuration. We’re working to fix this behavior and improve the user experience.

Please, let me know if any questions.

Best regards,

16.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Are you saying I won't have to delete the VDS, just remove the hosts from it, and re-add them once the license is applied?

17.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Yes, exactly. I tested using the following steps:

1. vSAN is created and licensed, the host is moved to the vSAN cluster and it's in evaluation, the vDS is configured and the host is added in it - it's your setup, isn't it?

2. Go to the DSwitch ->Related objects -> Hosts and remove the host from the current distributed switch

3. Assign the license to the host - the edition is Essential

4. Return to DSwitch and open Add and Manage Hosts wizard -> Add a host

5. The licensed host is added in DSwitch

18.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

But if the VSAN Kernel is on the dvSwitch (like in this case), you cannot just delete the dvSwitch.

Would it be save to migrate the VSAN Kernel to the standard vSwitch without putting the host into maintenance mode?

19.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Well we are finally licensed!  We had some serious issues one night because of some recommendations we received that included creating a second vmk for VSAN traffic.

We did have to migrate the VMKernel for VSAN off of the VDS before we were able to license the host.  We may have ran into a bug while doing this step.  We used the webclient to migrate the VMK with VSAN Traffic from our VDS to a VSS while in maintenance mode.  Then we migrated back to the VDS and tried to delete our VSS.  We received a message that we were about to delete a VSS with a VMK on it although we had already migrated the VMK back to the VDS.  We proceeded with the deletion but the host had no VSAN access when we brought it out of maintenance mode.  We had to recreate the VSS and migrate the VMK back in order to regain VSAN access.  Then everything was successful when we re-migrated it back to the VDS and deleted the VSS.

So the procedure that worked best for us in the end was to:

1.  Migrate all VMs off the host

2.  Migrate the VSAN Traffic VMK to a VSS that uses a Physical Adapter connected to the same Layer 2 network as the VDS

3.  Remove the host from the VDS

4.  License the Host

5.  Re-add the host to the VDS

6.  Migrate the VSAN Traffic VMK back to the VDS

7.  Migrate all the VMs back

We did migrate the VMK for VSAN Traffic while both in and out maintenance mode.  We did not experience any difference although maintenance mode may be best practice.

20.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Hi, this is a message from the far future. The year is 2020, in the month of November.  *** The issue encountered by CL4PTP still exists here in this time. VSAN licensing certainly enables vSphere Distributed Switch capability but the VSAN license key does not list vSphere Distributed Switch as a Feature. Do not create that VDS using that Eval license you intend to downgrade later - it's a trap!!! You will find difficulties in the process of applying your permanent license that doesn't include VDS as a feature, and messages will appear like "Assignment Validation Details" and "The selected license does not support some of the features that are currently available to the licensed assets". Wishing you well, and make good life choices. Sincerely, (not) lcuky

21.  RE: what vSAN License Includes?

Hi, this is a message from the further future. The year is 2022, in the month of May. This still is an issue not fixed. Sadly for us we have some TBs of data we need to migrate away before we remove the VDS so we can enable the VDS functionality and install the correct vSphere standard licenses. Plz fix this VMWare. So unnecessary this bug is still here

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