Licensing Errors and Migration Failures Post-Upgrade to VCF 9.1

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) from 8.0U3 to 9.1, ESXi hosts may report licensing errors despite a valid evaluation license. This discrepancy prevents virtual machine (VM) power-on and vMotion migrations due to a transition into a restricted state.

Following symptoms are observed:

• ESXi Host Client displays the banner: "Your License for ESXi has Expired."
• VM power-on attempts fail with the error: "vCenter Server was unable to find a suitable host to power on the following virtual machines."
• Migration attempts fail with the compatibility error: "Virtual machine has 4 virtual CPUs, but the host only supports 1" or "vMotion is not licensed for the Destination host."

 

Environment

• VCF 9.1
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

• The ESXi host incorrectly identifies the active evaluation license as expired, causing a transition to a restrictive "Free Hypervisor" state. This state enforces a 1-vCPU hardware limit and disables enterprise features regardless of the actual license entitlement.

Resolution

To resolve licensing errors follow the procedures below.

Note: If the following steps do not resolve the issue, consider reimaging the affected ESXi host.

1. Login to the affected ESXi host via SSH as "root" user
2. Locate the path for License configuration file, copy and create a backup:

   cp /etc/vmware/license.cfg /etc/vmware/license.cfg.bak

3. Delete the existing License.cfg file 

   rm -f /etc/vmware/license.cfg

4. Restart the host services to apply the changes 

   services.sh restart

5. Allow a brief period for the host services to initialize and communicate with vCenter Server 
6. Validate the license status within the ESXi Host Client to confirm the "Expired" banner is no longer present

Additional Information

If the issue persists, contact Broadcom Support: https://support.broadcom.com/web/ecx/contact-support