Unable assign license on ESXI hostclient - " Failed to decode license"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Assigning license on the ESXI host client fails with an error message: "Failed to decode license"

Environment

ESXI 6.x, 7.x, 8.x

Cause

Prerequisites that needs to checked :

You might be unable to assign a license to an ESXi host because of the following reasons:

• The calculated license usage for the host exceeds the license capacity. For example, you have a vSphere license key with capacity for two CPUs. You try to assign the key to a host that has four CPUs. You cannot assign the license, because the required license usage for the host is greater than the license capacity.

• The features on the host do not match the license edition. For example, you might configure hosts with vSphere Distributed Switch and vSphere DRS while in evaluation mode. Later, you try to assign vSphere Standard license to the hosts. This operation fails because the vSphere Standard edition does not include vSphere Distributed Switch and vSphere DRS.

• The host is connected to a vCenter Server system that is assigned a license that restricts the edition of the license that you want to assign

• Check the user permission for the ESXI local account. Check whether the local account on the ESXI has essential rights.

2024-07-16T18:47:10.117Z info hostd[2100214] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=esxui-33e7-9c09 user=<username> Activation finished; <<52b37e23-b425-dc59-60eb-327497f31f9b, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 8307'>, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 31940'>>, ha-license-manager, vim.LicenseManager.decodeLicense>
2024-07-16T18:47:10.117Z verbose hostd[2100214] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=esxui-33e7-9c09 user=<username> Arg licenseKey:
--> "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX"
2024-07-16T18:47:10.117Z info hostd[2100214] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=esxui-33e7-9c09 user=<username>] Throw vim.fault.NoPermission
2024-07-16T18:47:10.117Z info hostd[2100214] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=esxui-33e7-9c09 user=<username> Result:
--> (vim.fault.NoPermission) {
--> object = 'vim.Folder:ha-folder-root',
--> privilegeId = "Global.Licenses",
--> msg = "",
--> }

We can see the user has no permissions to assign the license, so it failed.

Resolution

• Assign a license with larger capacity.

• Upgrade the license edition to match the resources and features on the host or deactivate the features that do not match the license edition.

• Assign a vSphere license whose edition is compatible with the license edition of vCenter Server.

• Please use root account to assign the license in ESXI host client.