License assignment issues on auto-deploy hosts after upgrading from vSphere 7 to 8

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading an environment from vSphere 7 to 8 the hosts came up working well. Regrettably, the previously assigned productive licenses had been replaced with a trial license on auto-deployed ESXi-hosts. This despite of the fact that straight after the update the admin had assigned the prod license individually to each auto-deployed host via the VC GUI.

The issue can stay hidden/unnoticed for a while as in vCenter the licenses may show as correctly assigned, but on the ESXi hosts that may not have arrived. Latest after 60 days, when the trial expires, vMotions fails, VMs cannot be started, anymore. The system issues error messages regarding expired licenses (while the VC GUI reflects the "assigned" licenses as valid).

 

Environment

vCenter 8.0

Cause

The original assignment of the individual licenses to the auto-deployed hosts failed, silently.

While the vCenter show the assigned license, the auto-deployed hosts are still on their original trial license.

Resolution

To verify correct license assignment directly on the host:

• enable SSH on the ESXi hosts
• login to a shell on the host (as root)
• run:
  vim-cmd vimsvc/license --show
• Near the top output a line starting with "License key" will show the assigned license.

The issue was solved by:

• assigning a bulk default license to the DC as described in the setup documentation for auto-deploy on vCenter 8
• it may be necessary to reboot the impacted hosts

After this, the assignment of individual licenses to auto-deployed hosts worked as well.

Additional Information

There is possible impact to productive systems.

Checking the license assignments (see issue-description) should be included to the update procedure, if your environment makes use of the auto-deploy feature.