VCF Installer 9.1 will allow a host with an expired license to be used during installation

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• An ESX host has an expired license. This can be seen from the the host client or in the /var/run/log/hostd.log on the affected host:
  
  2026-06-04T12:51:57.831Z -WARNING Hostd 2100046 [esx@4413 sub="Hbrsvc"] Scheduler stopped due to license failure: (vim.fault.LicenseExpired) {
  
  
• This host is specified as one of the hosts to be used during initial VCF 9.1 installation of the management workload domain.
• There is no warning or pre-check failure that stops this host from being used.

Environment

VCF 9.1

Resolution

The host must be reinstalled prior to being used for VCF 9.1 installation.

Additional Information

Installing ESX