Registration process for private license file fails after evaluation license expired in VCF 9.1.

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• Evaluation licenses are expired in an environment that has never been licensed, causing ESXi hosts and workloads to disconnect from vCenter. Virtual machines cannot be powered on or off.
• Following page 15 of the VCF 9.1 Licensing Private License Files guide to configure an API key requires powering off and managing the license server vApp options from vCenter, which is not possible while hosts are disconnected due to license expiration.

Environment

VCF Operations 9.1

Cause

"For ESXi hosts, license or evaluation period expiry leads to disconnection from vCenter Server. All powered on virtual machines continue to work, but you cannot power on virtual machines after they are powered off. You cannot change the current configuration of the features that are in use. You cannot use the features that remained unused before the license expiration."  - About ESXi Evaluation and Licensed Modes

Resolution

Deploy a new host (or hosts), which will boot into a standard 90-day evaluation period, allowing proper environment setup and license application.

Note: this behavior is scheduled for enhancement in release 9.1.3.