vSAN Witness Appliance changes to an Expired Evaluation license in vCenter after a major version upgrade prior to 9.x

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

• The licensing for the Witness Appliance in a vSAN cluster in vCenter may show the License as Expired/Evaluation after a major version upgrade prior to 9.x.
  Example:
  6.x -> 7.x
  6.x -> 8.x
  7.x -> 8.x
  
  
• Checking the vSAN Witness license on the Witness Appliance UI directly, the license looks good but vCenter does not see it.
  

 

Environment

VMware vSAN (All versions prior to 9.x)

vSAN Stretch clusters

Cause

 

 

 

Resolution

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the vSAN Witness Appliance from the vCenter Server to check if the issue is resolved.

If the problem persists, perform the following steps on the Witness Appliance:

1. Execute on the witness appliance - esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /VSAN/HostDeployedFromWitnessOVF 
2. Execute on the witness appliance - backup.sh 0
3. Reboot the witness appliance
4. After the witness appliance reconnects back to vCenter, wait for some time (~5 mins) before proceeding to step 5
5. Disconnect and then reconnect the witness appliance from/to vCenter