Managing the license on VMware ESxi and VCenter is one of main job for system administrator.After the installation of the product, you may need to add the new license to increase the capacity and you may need to remove the old license keys from the those products. Sometimes you may need to pull out the existing license keys for inventory purpose. Here we will see how we can manage the ESXi and VCenter server licence using VSphere Client .
How we can get the installed license keys of VMware ESXI servers and VCenter Server ?
1. Login to VSphere Client and navigate it home.
2.Navigate to Administration and Licensing .Here you can see the existing license of Vmware ESXI nodes and VCenter Server.
3.In order to install or remove the existing License keys , you need to click on “Manage VSphere Licenses” (Step:2). This will popup the below window to manage the VSphere License keys.If you want to add any new license keys , you can just copy & paste one by one.
4.The next step will be assigning the specific license keys to the products.In some cases, license may be purchased to run some limited VM’s and that needs to assigned to specific host.In this case ,you need to assign the license keys manually.For ESXi , you need to click on the first tab. The below window shows vCenter Server licenses(Second tab).If you want to remove any existing license keys ,you can remove it using the next step. Once you have done,you click on the confirm changes.
5.You can also extract the reports from the reporting tab. (Refer Image Step:2). Once you click on the reporting tab , you will get window like the below one.You can just click export to get the details in Excel sheet.It provides complete usage details of the installed license details.
when we are talking about VSphere licensing , i just want to let you know about the free license of ESXi and vCenter Server. VMware offers 60 evaluation period for vCenter Server and ESXi .So you need to search for free license keys of Vmware ESXi and vCenter server . You can install and test these products with complete features for 60 days. After 60 days ,you may need to install the license keys to keep working on these products. vCenter will not allow to administrate the ESXi nodes after 60 days without valid license keys.
The below tables provides the licensing requirements of newer version of VMware ESXi and vCenter Server.
|
ata Center Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure
|
Existing product version | Version to be upgraded to | Is a new key required? | The SnS Contract for the product is active, can the license key be upgraded in My VMware Portal? |
| vCloud Suite (Standard, Advanced and Enterprise) | 5.1 | 5.5 | No | The existing license key also unlocks version 5.5 |
| 5.5 | – | No | This is the latest version | |
| vSphere or ESXi (Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus) | 4.x | 5.0 or 5.1 or 5.5 | Yes |
Yes.
|
| 5 | 5.1 or 5.5 | No | The existing license key also unlocks version 5.1 and 5.5 | |
| 5.1 | 5.5 | No | The existing license key also unlocks version 5.1 and 5.5 | |
| 5.5 | – | No | This is the latest version | |
| vSOM – vSphere with Operations Management (Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus) | 5.1 | 5.5 | Yes |
Yes.
|
| 5.5 | – | No | This is the latest version | |
| vCenter Server (Standard and Foundation) | 4.x | 4.x or 5.0 or 5.1 or 5.5 | Yes |
Yes.
|
| 5 | 5.1 or 5.5 | No | The existing license key also unlocks version 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 | |
| 5.1 | 5.5 | No | The existing license key also unlocks version 5.1 and 5.5 | |
| 5.5 | – | No | This is the latest version |
Thanks to VMware.
You can also download Free VMwareESXi 5.5 that VMware offers without any memory limitation. For more details,Check it here.
Check out for below articles as well,
Configure VNC for VMware virtual Machine Console. (vCenter doesn’t require to access VM’s console)
How to create ISCSI Datastore using ISCSI LUNS
Recover VMware ESXi’s root password
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