After Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, our shared goal is to focus and invest in on-premises products as published in earlier blog posts by Krish Prasad and Rick Walsworth.
vSphere+ users who have connected their vCenter servers to the Cloud Console are encouraged to migrate from SaaS to on-premises deployments to benefit from our product investments and roadmap.This article helps vSphere+ users disconnect their vCenter Servers and apply their license keys.
To support users to remove vSphere+ capabilities in brownfield deployments and move vSphere environment to termed license mode.
The proposed solution is to disconnect the vCenter from the GW/Cloud and remove the subscription so that the customer can apply license keys. А vCenter API is available for this.
Note:
Steps:
1. Obtain the necessary license keys for virtual infrastructure licensing after unsubscribing. (The system will transition into an unlicensed state, and to avert any potential side effects, the process of applying the license keys must remain streamlined. Therefore, it is advised that the customer possesses the keys in advance.).
Note: The keys will be available on the Broadcom Support Portal under "My Entitlements".
2. Prepare for maintenance and possible downtime.
NOTE: Once the script is executed, the vCenter and ESXi hosts will be assigned evaluation licenses valid for 60 days. Users should apply their licenses as soon as possible.
Hosts built more than 60 days before the licensing change will disconnect from the vCenter Server between 0 seconds and one hour of the performing the script.
For any disconnected hosts: Reconnect the hosts to vCenter as needed and assign the new license key when prompted while connecting the host.
3. Power off the GW to sever the connection from GW to vCenter. This will prevent automatic re-subscription from the GW.
4. Download the attached delete-subscription.sh file from the attachments section of the iKB.
chmod +x delete-subscription.sh.
./delete-subscription.sh <vc_fqdn>
'bash: ./delete-subscription.sh: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory'
is reported when the script is run, it is caused by DOS carriage returns that are added to the script when copying the script file from a Windows-based text editor. sed -i -e 's/\r$//' delete-subscription.sh
[priority='ERROR' thread=' ' user=' ' org=' ' trance=' ' ] Response code is: 400. Response: Bad Request
., it is due to an invalid character(s) that are used in the local SSO admin password (i.e. administrator@vsphere.local). 5. Execute the application of license keys to all assets within the virtual environment from the vCenter Web UI.
The assignment of the new licenses should happen in this order:
6. Delete the GW VM. Do not power it back on.
7. Script will only remove the subscription of vCenter Server with vSphere+. We will need to manually remove all the CloudGateway service accounts (with prefix: CloudServicesGateway) from vCenter Server.
Please Note:
Fail back Process:
In case of failure, follow below steps to roll back the chagne:
To license vSAN Witness nodes, please follow the steps below:
With vSphere+, the witness nodes were recognized as ESXi hosts, and licenses were allocated to them accordingly. Therefore, after executing the script, the witness appliance is anticipated to have an evaluation license.
To resolve this issue, it will need to redeploy the witness node and re-add it to the vSAN cluster to ensure it receives the default embedded license.
Deploy Witness Node:
Deploy a new witness appliance by getting the desired Version via the following steps:
1.) Log into the customer portal: https://support.broadcom.com/contact-support.html
2.) On the left side select "My Downloads"
3.) Select "VMware Cloud Foundation" on the upper right corner or the web page (located besides 'Account Name')
4.) In the Product Selection, select "VMware vSAN"
5.) Select the desired Version
6.) Select the section "Drivers & Tools"
7.) Look for desired Version of "VMware vSAN Witness Appliance"
8.) Select the arrow on the right side to expand the entry
9.) Download the desired Version