Removing License in vCenter if you are not able to remove from License Manager or JXplorer

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Guide user to remove unnecessary license(s) from vCenter License Manager if you do not have access to JXplorer.
• In the event that you have a stale, left behind, or expired license and you are not able to remove it within the Licensing Manager. You may also see the expired or expiring license banner:

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

Cause

Occasionally, vCenter upgrades carry over expired license(s) or if a service like vSAN was enabled and then removed sometimes the license stays behind. Then, when you try to remove it from vCenter License Manager it will not allow the action and the Delete/Remove option is greyed out.

Resolution

Note: Make sure to take a snapshot of the vCSA VM before proceeding with the resolution steps (It is mandatory to take offline snapshots of all nodes if you have multiple vCenter Servers in Enhanced Linked Mode).

Refer Take Snapshots of a Virtual Machine for steps on taking a snapshot.

Once this is completed, proceed to remove the license.

• Go to the MOB menu https://<VCSA-IP-or-FQDN>/mob?moid=LicenseAssignmentManager
  • Login using the [email protected] credentials
• Click on QueryAssignedLicenses and when the below pop-up menu opens up, select invoke method
• This will provide output of licenses assigned and we will need to go through this output to find the entityId for the license that we are trying to remove:

 

• In the example below, the vSAN Eval license is the license to remove and the entityId is "domain-c8":

 

• Close out the pop-up menu and select RemoveAssignedLicense. Then, enter the entityID in the value box that we found in the previous step.
• Click Invoke Method once and you will see a new message: "Method Invocation Result: void":

 

• Close the pop-up menu.
• Next, select QueryAssignedLicenses. Do Not enter any data and click on Invoke Method. Now you will see that license key has been removed:

 

• After the process is completed, you can review the licensing manager and the respective license should be removed:

Additional Information

• This issue is more of a cosmetic issue as it has no impact on current function if the license is expired or not being used
• Should any issue with vCenter Server functionality or access arise, return to the ESXi Host Client and revert to snapshot on all VCSA VM nodes.

Related KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=327486