"The due date for submitting your usage report" warning in VCF Operations 9.x

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

In a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x environment, the VCF Operations UI displays one or more of the following warnings:

• A red banner stating: "One or more licenses have expired and your service will be degraded on [Date]."
• A license management warning: "The due date for submitting your usage report is on [Date]. To prevent service interruption, download a usage file and submit it in the VCF Business Services console."
• vSphere Client shows a warning icon for the Expiration Date under Administration → Licensing → Version 9+ Licenses, even though the subscription contract is still valid.
• Usage data reports no longer appear or reflect within the console after a VCF Operations 9.1 upgrade and subsequent instance re-registration (using a new registration file combined with a VCF License Server enrollment)

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x
• VCF Operations 9.x

Cause

This behavior is expected as part of the VCF 9 subscription licensing "heartbeat" mechanism. VCF 9 uses a Solution License File that carries a rolling 180-day validity window. Even if the total contract length is several years, the local license file in VCF Operations must be refreshed every 180 days by reporting usage data. This ensures compliance and provides the system with an updated 180-day "heartbeat" extension.

Resolution

To clear the warning and extend the validity window, follow the steps below based on environments mode chosen.

VCF Operations 9.0.x

• Method 1: Connected Mode (Internet Access Available) apply the steps in document Update Licenses in Connected Mode
• Method 2: Disconnected Mode (Air-Gapped) apply the steps in document Report License Usage and Update Licenses in Disconnected Mode

VCF Operations 9.1.x

• Method 1: Connected Mode (Internet Access Available) apply the steps in document Update Licenses in Connected Mode
• Method 2: Disconnected Mode (Air-Gapped) apply the steps in document Report License Usage and Update Licenses in Disconnected Mode

Note: In rare cases, the imported license may add additional licenses that require usage. Repeating the procedure above should resolve the issue.

VCF Operations Suite API

If the UI fails to generate a .gzip file and instead downloads an unsupported .rpt file, use the internal Suite API to manually retrieve the usage report:

1. Access the API endpoint: https://<FQDN>/suite-api.
2. Click Authorize → Enter in Local Admin user credentials → Authorize → Close
3. Navigate to Internal APIs → POST /Internal/license-manager/usage/report
4. Leave "Name Description X-Ops-API-use-unsupported boolean" as true → Click Execute → navigate to Response Body → Click on Download File
5. Proceed with the manual upload to the VCF Business Services Console using this file