Allow vRealize Suite and vCloud Suite customer to mix old and new versions license keys

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on vRealize Suite and vCloud Suite to mix old and new versions license keys.

Resolution

If you use VMware vRealize Suite (any edition), either as a standalone VMware offering or as part of the VMware vCloud Suite software bundle, the following terms apply:

You may use the 2018 edition and 2019 edition license keys to activate and use the software components in the VMware vRealize Suite bundle as described in this paragraph. You may selectively upgrade some software components in the VMware vRealize Suite bundle to newer versions while keeping other software components at old versions. Newer versions of the software components may require a 2019 edition license key while old versions of the software components may require a 2018 edition license key. You may use the 2018 edition license key to use old versions of the software components that have not been upgraded and the 2019 license key to use new versions of the software components that have been upgraded. If you use a 2019 edition license key to access and use a software component in the VMware vRealize Suite bundle, you must not use the 2018 edition license key for that software component. As a reminder, the 2018 edition license key can be applied to vRealize Suite 2019 products, but the 2019 edition license cannot be applied to vRealize Suite 2018 products. 

For example, if you have licensed one hundred (100) Portable License Units of VMware vRealize Suite to be deployed on a per Processor basis, you may deploy one hundred (100) Processors in an environment with VMware vSphere and use the following:

1. VMware vRealize Automation version 7.5 included in VMware vRealize Suite 2018.
2. The license key provided with VMware vRealize Suite 2018 to use VMware vRealize Automation version 7.5.
3. VMware vRealize Operations version 8.0 included in VMware vRealize Suite 2019.
4. The license key provided with VMware vRealize Suite 2019 to use VMware vRealize Operations version 8.0.
5. The software components and license keys described in (1) – (4) above on the 100 Processors of VMware vRealize Suite that have been deployed in an environment with VMware vSphere.

Before you upgrade and accept the 2019 version on customerconnect.vmware.com, you need to document your previous license key outside of the portal to manually use the 2018 license key where needed.

Certain features of VMware vRealize Suite and VMware vCloud Suite may not be available if you upgrade certain software components in VMware vRealize Suite and VMware vCloud Suite to newer versions while keeping other software components at old versions. For example, integration features between VMware vRealize Operations and VMware vRealize Automation in the vRealize Suite may not be available if the integration requires that the all software licenses and software components are the same version.

Please refer to the below instructions on how to use vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to deploy products with different licenses. 

Using vRealize Lifecycle Manager (to be referred as LCM hence forth in this doc) to deploy products with different licenses

Prerequisites:

1. Relevant license keys should be added to locker from LCM UI in prior to their use. This is an optional requirement since there is option to add a new license key during product deployment itself.
2. If Customer Connect account has the license key and LCM can connect to Customer Connect (with or without a proxy), then upon registering the Customer Connect account in LCM, all the license keys belonging to that account shall be auto saved in locker.
   Note: If multiple Customer Connect accounts are added then collection of all the license keys shall be stored in locker with unique entry for each license key, i.e. if account ‘A’ & account ‘B’ both has a common license entry then locker shall store them against any one of the account to avoid duplicate entry. Download of a license key shall be skipped from Customer Connect only if it is already added in LCM.
   
   

Procedure

1. While creating new environment in LCM or while performing organic growth with a new product deployment, we need to arrive at the step where a license needs to be selected. The name of this step in the wizard is ‘License’.
2. If locker does not have the license entries already, then users can always add from this step by clicking the ADD button.
3. Selecting license keys for the deployment can be done with the following 3 easy steps:
   1. Click on the select button as shown below. This shall open a pop-up with listing of the keys present in LCM locker which are eligible for the products & versions selected for deployment.
      
      
   2. Select all/probable license keys which may fit for the deployment. A short cut approach is to select all the keys.
      
   3. Once the keys are selected, they will be listed in the table as shown below. At this moment they are not set for the deployment. For that we need click the button with label ‘Validate Association’ to complete the process.
      
      
      This process automatically associates a license with appropriate products. If multiple choices are available, then user is asked to choose one of the possible entries as shown below.
      
   4. Once validation is done and licenses are applied to all products (which are getting deployed), the final table will look like following image.
      
      

Notes:

• While adding or selecting licenses, there is no restriction imposed on the types of license used. Hence the license keys being used here can be either vRealize Suite License, or standalone product licenses. LCM will not prevent users unless the license has expired already.
• License validation assures association with each of the products that is considered for deployment. Hence the option the provide license keys from under the product advanced property has been removed. All license selection and association with products, must be done form the license stage only.

The license validation does not ensure availability of functionality/feature in a product based on the selected key. Hence user needs to take a conscious decision while selecting a license key. Depending on the products and the desired inter-product configuration, the appropriate license key should be selected.

Additional Information

Do not use LCM directly if you are using VMware Cloud Foundation. Use SDDC Manager to upgrade any components to versions supported by Cloud Foundation.