Fleet Management Stale License Removal Fails in VCF Operations

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environments, administrators may attempt to remove an incorrectly assigned add-on license (such as NVIDIA Cores or Private AI Foundation) from the environment. However, these licenses cannot be deleted directly within the user interface under VCF Operations > License Management > Licenses.

When the license assignment is removed from the Broadcom Business Services Console (BCS) portal, VCF Operations attempts to automatically purge the license from its inventory. This process fails, and the License shows an Alert:

"This license is no longer associated with this VCF Operations instance, but could not be fully removed. To complete the removal, assign a new license to the vCenter instance which has this license assigned to it."

The license (or Add-On license) is still found associated within the vCenter client and there is no UI method to remove it.

Environment

VCF 9.x

Cause

When an add-on license is removed or unassigned from a VCF Operations instance via the BCS portal, VCF Operations attempts to automatically execute an inventory cleanup. This cleanup process fails because the license is actively in use by the managed vCenter.

Resolution

To allow VCF Operations to cleanly remove the affected license you will need to do the following:

1. Remove the license association from this VCF Operations instance or delete the assigned license from the Broadcom BCS portal.
2. Remove the license from vCenter using the following KB article: How to remove a License Manually from vCenter using ldapmodify.
3. Refresh your license information from VCF Operations, License Management, Registration (or upload a new license if in disconnected mode).

Allow a refresh (15 minutes) for the license to be removed from VCF Operations.