Unable to assign license to vCenter server appliance from VCF Operations 9.1 fails due to incorrect License Server hostname and domain name.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

License assignment to a selected vCenter in VCF Operations 9.1 by deploying and configuring License Server 9.1 may fail during network configuration. Some of the errors are: 

• Attempting to deploy a License server OVA from vCenter may fail post License server deployment during the License server Network configuration phase with an error similar to below on the License Server VM console:
  
  [FAILED] Failed to start Wait for Network to be Configured.
  
  

• In VCF Operations > Manage > Licenses & Registrations tab  > vCenter Systems tab, selecting the View Details button for the error message shows the message below:

  This license could not be assigned to the selected vCenter system. Check the network connection between the license server and the selected vCenter system and try again.

• On the vCenter server, /var/log/vmware/cis-license/license.log shows timed out reaching License Server an incorrect URL or FQDN  :

  YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss [LicenseServerEntitlementsDelegate"] Caught exception:
com.vmware.cis.license.entitlement.management.exception.LicenseServerManagementException: Failed to get Entitlements [#######-#######-#####-#######] from License Server [######-####-##-#######] with URL [<INCORRECT_LicenseServer_FQDN>] with response [License Server connection error: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out]

• From the license server VM > Configure > vApp Options > Properties,  Domain_Name and/or Hostname field(s) are found to have incorrect values.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1
• VMware vSphere Foundation 9.1 

Cause

One or more incorrect network parameter input during the License Server OVA deployment prevents the appliance's network services from initializing correctly

In this particular scenario, during the license server deployment, the hostname and the domain name inputs were both specified with the License Server FQDN, resulting in the failure.

The Hostname field should be either kept blank (wherein vCenter will fetch it from DNS using reverse lookup on the IP) or the complete FQDN that uses the same domain suffix populated in the Domain Name field.

The Domain Name field should be primary DNS domain suffix for this license server.

Resolution

Re-deploy the Licenses server with the correct Network configuration during the OVA deployment :

1. Delete the failed License Server virtual machine from the vCenter Server inventory by following Delete a License Server
   
   
2. Review the License Server Networking and ensure forward and reverse DNS lookups are properly established for the target License Server IP address along with bidirectional connectivity over TCP port 443 between VCF Operations, the target vCenter Server, and the designated License Server IP
   
   
3. Redeploy the License Server OVA template by following Deploy a License Server
   
   
4. Register the VCF Operations with the newly deployed License Server on the Business Service Console by following Registering VCF Operations and a License Server with the VCF Business Services Console