"License is Invalid" watermark appearing in vRealize Operations (vROps).

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

License Group constructs and license application has been updated to allow for better mixing of license types.
Due to this, it may be necessary to reconfigure license groups to accurately reflect the usage of license keys.

Symptoms:

• The License is Invalid watermark appears on some or all objects while navigating under the Environment section in the vRealize Operations UI.
• The License is Invalid watermark appears after upgrading to vRealize Operations.
• You have enough license keys to license your collected objects.

 

Environment

VMware vRealize Operations 8.2.x
VMware vRealize Operations 8.0.x
VMware vRealize Operations 8.1.x
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.7.x
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.6.x
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 7.0.x
VMware vRealize Operations 8.x
VMware vRealize Operations 8.3.x
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 7.5.x

Resolution

License Groups should contain 1 license type, such as per VM license keys, or per CPU license keys.
You may have multiple licenses applied to a group, but only 1 type should be applied to a group.
As for the objects in the group, the object type your license type applies to will need to be included, as well as the  closely related objects.

Example: License type is "Per VM" - The License Group should contain VMs, and the hosts those VMs are on.

Scenario: We have 3 Licenses or varying types; 1 Per CPU license with a count of 60, and 2 Per VM licenses for a total count of 200 VMs.  To license our objects correctly we will create 2 license Groups.
One License Group will contain the Per CPU license keys with Host objects and the VMs those hosts contain.  We will call this License Group,  Group A.
The other License Group will contain the Per VM license keys with VM objects and the Hosts those VMs are on.  We will call this license Group, Group B.
Note that the VMs and hosts contained Group B will not overlap with the hosts and VMs contained Group A, and vice versa.
For the following configurations you will need to be logged into the vRealize Operations UI as an administrative user with access to all objects.

Group A Configuration

1. Navigate to Administration > Management > Licensing > License Groups.
2. Click Add to create a new License Group.
3. Name the License Group; in this case we will call it Group A.
4. Select the License keys for this group, ensuring the License types match.  For this group we will select our 1 Per CPU license key.
5. Click Next to advance to the Add Members section.
6. Expand the Define Membership Criteria section.
7. Now we need to create dynamic criteria to add our Hosts and the VMs on those hosts.  In our scenario environment, we have 2 clusters.  Cluster A has 15 hosts with 4 vCPUs each, which is a perfect match for our Pre CPU license key with a count of 60.  Our first Dynamic criteria will be based on Host System. Criteria for this will be Relationship, Descendant of, contains, <name of cluster>.
8. To include the VMs on those hosts, we will click Add another criteria set to create an OR statement based on Virtual Machine, with the criteria matching Relationship, Descendant of, contains, <name of host>.
9. Click Next to Preview the License Group.
10. Click Finish to save the License Group.

Under either criteria set we can click Add to create an AND statement to specify other criteria, such as different cluster/host names.
Our completed criteria set will look like this:

Group B Configuration

1. Navigate to Administration > Management > Licensing > License Groups.
2. Click Add to create a new License Group.
3. Name the License Group; in this case we will call it Group B.
4. Select the License keys for this group, ensuring the License types match.  For this group we will select our 2 Per VM license keys.
5. Click Next to advance to the Add Members section.
6. Expand the Define Membership Criteria section.
7. Now we need to create dynamic criteria to add our VMs and the Hosts those VMs are running on.  In our scenario environment, we have 2 clusters.  Cluster B has a total of 200 VMs, which is a perfect match for our Pre VM license keys with a total count of 200.  Our first Dynamic criteria will be based on Virtual Machine. Criteria for this will be Relationship, Descendant of, contains, <name of cluster>.
8. To include the VMs on those hosts, we will click Add another criteria set to create an OR statement based on Host System.  Note that we do not need to set any other criteria in this case.
9. Click Next to Preview the License Group.
10. Click Finish to save the License Group.

Under either criteria set we can click Add to create an AND statement to specify other criteria, such as different cluster/host names.
Our completed criteria set will look like this:

 

Back on the License Keys screen, click the Green refresh icon to update the license usage.
Your License Keys should now show a correct usage, and the License is Invalid watermark should be gone.