ESXi hosts version 9.1.1 fail to accept host-scoped licenses after upgrading VCF Operations or License Server to version 9.1.1

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• ESXi 9.1.1 hosts show a status warning stating "License assignment failed for this host" in the vSphere Client.
• Re-assigning the license manually or re-syncing from the License Server does not clear the warning.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations 9.1.1
• VMware ESXi 9.1.1

Cause

This issue occurs if the ESXi hosts are patched to version 9.1.1 prior to patching the VCF Operations or License Server to version 9.1.1. As a result, the host license will not be regularly updated, which will lead to eventual expiration.

Resolution

This issue is under review with Broadcom Engineering and will be resolved in future release. Subscribe to this knowledge article to get updates on this issue.

For further details, refer to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.1 Release Notes.

Additional Information

Workarounds:

To temporarily mitigate the licensing failure, perform one of the following workarounds:

• Workaround 1: Deploy a fresh instance of the License Server appliance and migrate your existing license entitlements to the new License Server.
• Workaround 2: Assign a different valid license directly to the affected ESXi host.

Impact and Verification:

Host licenses do not regularly update, leading to eventual expiration. This issue does not impact core hypervisor operations, ESXi host stability, existing running workloads, virtual machines, provisioning, or adding new ESXi hosts.

Check the licensing status and the expiration date of the currently assigned host license by executing the following command in an SSH session on the host:

vim-cmd vimsvc/license --show