vRealize Suite 2018 products deployment fails with License Error in vRLCM 8.1.0 when using vRealize Flex License

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide instructions to successfully install vRealize Suite 2018 using vRealize Flex Licenses.

Symptoms:
In vRLCM 8.1 when deploying products with vRealize Flex license :

1. vRealize Automation 7.6.0 fails in the license step.
   • On the request page details, failure would be at the "vralicense" stage.
2. vRelaize Log Insight 4.8.0 fails in the license step.   
   • On the request page details, failure would be at the "vrlilicense" stage.
3. vRealize Operations 7.5.0 fails in the license step.
   • On the request page details, failure would be at the "vropslicense" stage.

Environment

VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.1.x

Cause

vRealize Suite 2018 product namely vRA 7.6.0,vRA 7.50, vROps 7.5.0 and vRLI 4.8.0 does not natively support vRealize Flex Licenses, when users try to deploy these using vRealize Flex licenses. Therefore, it will fail.

Resolution

• Currently there is no resolution, VMware Engineering is aware of the issue and working to resolve the issue in the future release.
• For users who would want to use vRealize Flex Licenses can use the workaround by downloading relevant patches to enable Flex support for vRealize Suite 2018.

Workaround:

To workaround the issue:

1. When the deployment request fails, go to the request page and click on the Failed icon.
2. Observe the stage and confirm if its the license stage.
3. Check the error message and verify if it says invalid license.
4. Click on Retry and modify the skip flag from false to true.
      skipTask = true
5. Submit the request.
6. After the deployment of product is successful, go to the respective product cards under Manage Environment and install patches. See image for illustration.

List of patches that contains the relevant change.

• vRA 7.6.0 HF5
• vRLI 4.8.0 HF1
• vROps 7.5.0 HF1
• vRA 7.5.0 HF13

7. After the patches are installed, Add Flex licenses to the products from product card.
8. (Optional) - Download and execute the attached script from within vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to enable deployment of the vRealize Suite 2018 products with flex compatibility.
   1. SSH to the vRSLCM console.
   2. Download the attached version-enable-script.zip to the vRSLCM VM and unzip it.
   3. Execute the script from within the vRSLCM VM by running the command:  

python version-enable-script.pyc

Successful run enables additional product versions under product policy. This can be validated from vRSLCM User Interface (UI) under 'Lifecycle Operations'-> Home > Settings > Product Support Pack.