How do I resolve the "There are expired or expiring licenses in your inventory" alert in Aria Operations?

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

There is an alert banner at the top of Aria Operations 8.18 that has a "MANAGE YOUR LICENSE" button, which navigates to Subscriptions>License Management.

The expired certificates are unable to be removed because of an alert that shows up when attempting to use the "REMOVE LICENSE" button:

Your selection contains license(s) that cannot be removed. To remove those license(s) from VMware Aria Operations, you must first remove them from vCenter.

Environment

VMware Aria Operations 8.18.0

Cause

This is caused by any of the configured vCenter's inventory having an expired, or expiring license.

Resolution

For (each of) the vCenter(s) that is(are) configured in Administration>Integrations:

1. Open up a browser tab and go to each vCenter's URL.
2. Launch the web client, and log in with a user that has privileges to manage licenses (Global>Licenses Privilege).
3. Under the navigation menu icon at the top left and select Administration.
4. Navigate to Licenses.
5. Determine if one of the licenses currently in the inventory of this vCenter is one that is showing up in the Aria Operations Licenses.
6. If an expired, or expiring license is found, validate that the license has been replaced with a valid license for the assets that are, or may have been associated with the license.
7. Once there is a valid license which covers the associated asset, and the license is showing as unassigned, take note of the license key in a safe spot, and it should be okay to remove the license from the vCenter inventory at that point.  Note: Please make sure the license is noted in case it has to be added back to the inventory for some reason.

Once the expired or expiring licenses have been remediated in the vCenter inventory, they should be removable in the Aria Operations interface once the change is synched after a few minutes:

1. Navigate to Subscriptions>License Management.
2. Scroll down to the associated licenses, and select the expired, or expiring licenses.
3. Click the "REMOVE LICENSE" button.
4. Now the license should be removed instead of displaying the alert.
5. The banner displaying "There are expired or expiring licenses in your inventory" should no longer show up.