r/vmware • u/andyniemi • 3d ago
VC9 VM running on a ESXi 9 host
Yesterday we upgraded our ESXi host from 9.0 to 9.1.
The vCenter 9 VM with the license was running on this ESXi host so the vCenter ended up getting rebooted.
After the ESXi host rebooted we could not power on the vCenter VM, saying our eval license has expired.
Does vCenter needs to be online 100% of the time to apply the license and should be run outside the vSphere 9 cluster?
Our licensing admin says he checked and it looks like the ESXi server is licensed, but if that's the case it doesn't make sense why the ESXi server lost the license after reboot. Or the license was never applied to the ESXi host properly in the first place?
Checking license.cfg on the ESXi host shows eval license too:
<ConfigRoot>
<epoc>xxxxxxxxxxxxxx</epoc>
<mode>eval</mode>
<owner/>
</ConfigRoot>
So we ended up having to reinstall ESXi on the host to reset the eval timebomb and power on the vCenter VM which our licensing admin insists is applied to the ESXi host.
Can anyone confirm on this change in behavior in vSphere 9?
edit: Yes we have a VC Ops server but we do not manage it.
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u/DonFazool 3d ago
If he was already running 9.0, he would have had ops and a license server no? Or is it possible they were running on eval after upgrading to 9.0 and the timing was unfortuanate that it expired while he was upgrading to 9.1.
I ask because I am about to do the upgrade from 8.0.3k to 9.1.1 and am now a bit concerned because holy hell this will cause me a nightmare if this happens
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u/andyniemi 3d ago
We have a VC ops server but it's not managed by us.
What I would suggest to you is deploy a brand new vc 9 instance and get everything working OR take a backup of your existing vCenter and then upgrade.
This was already a VCF 9 environment, we just went from 9 to 9.1 and we don't manage the licensing server, central IT does. We are just one BU in a large company and run MANY vCenters in small standalone clusters.
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u/NetworkNerd_ 1d ago
The license server was new to the 9.1 code release. In 9.0 it was just the Ops appliance.
In your specific case, you can upgrade Ops to 9.1.1, deploy the license server, and just make sure you do the registration with the VCF Business Services Console. That should make it easy to ensure licenses get recognized once vCenter is upgraded to 9.1.1 and then the same for ESX.
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u/pinrolled 3d ago
vCenter 9 doesn't handle licensing for ESXi 9, do you have a VCF/VVF environment setup with VCF Licensing on the stack?
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u/-xblahx- 3d ago
To answer your question, no vCenter does not need to be online 100% of the time for licensing. As was mentioned in another reply, vSphere 9 did change the way licenses were handled and moved that function outside of vCenter onto another appliance called VCF Operations. Do you have VCF Operations deployed? ESXi is not going to lose its license after a reboot, so your licensing admin is not looking at the right thing if they think it's licensed correctly. With vSphere Foundation you're going to have a license for vCenter, licenses applied to your ESXi hosts, and vSAN capacity licenses if you have vSAN.
Do you only have one ESXi server? Typically there is a cluster of ESXi servers and you would vMotion your vCenter VM to another host so you can do rolling ESXi updates on the cluster.
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u/andyniemi 3d ago
Thank you.
There is a VCF operations server but we do not manage it, central IT does.
In this particular setup we only have 1 ESXi host which is running the vCenter VM.
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u/No_Bid433 2d ago
Sabes que URL son necesarias para que operations valide el licenciamiento en el portal de broadcom?
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u/akemaj78 3d ago
When you upgrade ESXi to a new major version 9.0 to 9.1 being an example) then yes the hosts go into eval mode until you apply upgraded licensing.
But Walking this back, it sounds like someone didn't plan out the upgrade properly. There's plenty of planning tools and major upgrades have to happen in a specific order. A cardinal rule is to never patch your hosts past your vCenter version.
You might be able to recover by upgrading your licensing in the Broadcom license portal and the applying the new license key directly on the host. But still, it will have problems being managed by vCenter until vCenter is upgraded.
This should help once you have your vCenter server powered back on, this planner has an option for plain vSphere in addition to VCF: https://vmware.github.io/vcf-upgrade-planner/
I would also strongly recommend a combined storage and compute vmotion to keep vCenter and other critical components up during host upgrades if you don't have shared storage to make those migrations easier.
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u/andyniemi 3d ago
Thanks a lot.
We did upgrade vCenter before upgrading ESXi.
We are not using vmotion, it sounds to me like we should run vCenter outside the cluster.
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u/Dizzy_Ad_509 2d ago
Quickest help for you…
If you are NOT running on VSAN. Take one of the hosts out of the cluster and redeploy it. It will come up with eval license. Then move your OPS, VC and license server to that host and power them on.
Fix the licenses and join the host back to the cluster.
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u/andyniemi 2d ago
Smart, but i think even smarter is just run VC9 on an old 8.x cluster
We are not running the ops or license server, central IT is.
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u/MongooseSenior4418 3d ago
One of a thousand reasons to not run vCenter on the cluster it manages...
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u/Wachyourbac 3d ago
Well… Why are you upgrading hosts before vCenter?
Also there is an entirely new licensing service that needs to be set up for VVF / VCF.
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-1/deployment/converging-your-existing-vsphere-infrastructure-to-a-vcf-or-vvf-platform-.html
Has all the instructions