Unable to assign a license to the vCenter from the VCF Operations UI because the vCenter is not displayed in the vCenter Systems table on the License page

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• In VCF Operations, under License Management, the vCenter is not listed as available for license assignment.
• Under Administration > Integration, the vCenter appears to be added and collecting.
• However, when selecting Edit vCenter & then selecting Manage Integration, below warning message is displayed:
  The vCenter credentials you use must have the Global.Licenses previleges assigned and be a member of the LicenseService.Administration Single Sign-On group. Go to vSphere Client to configure them and try again.

• Re-adding the vCenter adapter after its removal results in the same warning being displayed.
• Verification confirms that Administrator and Global permissions are correctly assigned in vCenter, and connectivity between the appliances is functional.
• Operations error details in /storage/log/vcops/log/adapters/ManagementAdapter/ManagementAdapter_##.log

YYYY-MM-DD ERROR ManagementAdapter 9164 [ops@4413 threadId="17###" threadName="vcf-licensing-collection-65952" instanceId="83"] [(83) com.vmware.adapter.management.components.licensing.vcf.sso.SsoManager.acquireBearerToken] - Cannot acquire SAML token:
com.vmware.vim.sso.client.exception.TimeSynchronizationException: Server returned 'request expired' less than 0 seconds after request was issued, but it shouldn't have expired for at least 600 seconds.
YYYY-MM-DD ERROR ManagementAdapter 9164 [ops@4413 threadId="17###" threadName="vcf-licensing-collection-65952" instanceId="83"] [(83) com.vmware.adapter.management.components.licensing.vcf.VcLicensingAuthorizer.isLicenseServiceAdmin] - Cannot acquire SAML token
YYYY-MM-DD ERROR ManagementAdapter 9164 [ops@4413 threadId="17###" threadName="vcf-licensing-collection-65952" instanceId="83"] [(83) com.vmware.adapter.management.components.licensing.vcf.collector.VCenterLicenseUsageCollector.collect] - The configured User account for the VC endpoint <vCenterFQDN> is missing the required permission Global.Licenses. License collection will not be performed.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundations (VCF) Operations 9.x
• vCenter 9.x

Cause

A time synchronization drift exists between the vCenter and the VCF Operations instance. This time skew causes SAML token requests to expire immediately. As a result, VCF Operations is unable to license the vCenter and ESX hosts.

Resolution

Ensure that the time is synchronized between vCenter and VCF Operations. Use the same NTP server for both vCenter and VCF Operations.

1. To verify and update the NTP configuration on the vCenter appliance, use below document:
   Configure Network Time Protocol (NTP) on the vCenter
2. To verify and update the NTP configuration on the VCF Operations appliance, use below document:
   Reconfigure NTP on the VCF Operations Cluster Nodes for Site Protection and Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation
3. Make sure the Time zone on the vCenter management UI is also same as that on the NTP server. 

After updating NTP, wait 5–10 minutes for the vCenter to appear under License Management.