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Janmail
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

License Check Question

Hi guys,

 

I have 2 servers 1.esxi host, and 1 vcenter on it.

those both are little outdated and so I decided to install the 6.7 version on a new server.

So I installed esxi 6.7 and inside it I installed vcenter 6.7  both are now unlicesed in trial mode.

I want to move my old licenses from old servers to new.

 

My question is:  how does the license check work, If I take the license off the old one, then should the old one turn off directly and then I can add the license on new one ? what are the time periods of license checks?

Or I should first turn of the old, then add the license to new ?

I have to do it in a way that I can get back access to servers asap.

thanks in advance for any advise / information.

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4 Replies
bryanvaneeden
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi @Janmail ,

There are no actual "online" license checks. But if I understand this correctly, you have an "old" environment with some licences, and a "new" environment with some licences.

You can copy the licenses and assign them to the new environment, temporary, so that both environments are using the same licences. Just make sure you migrate your workload over and remove the old environment after that. This way only the new environment will have the licences.

Visit my blog at https://vcloudvision.com!
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

@Janmail 

All 6.x software versions use the same licence key, so as long as your old and new environments are both 6.x and you don't use both environments at the same time you should be OK.

But you don't say what your old version was - if it is only 5.x you will need 6.x license keys.


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Janmail
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for both replies, @scott28tt and @bryanvaneeden 

I have most of my systems on 6.0. and I wanted to do updates and patches which would be a nightmare on old systems, so I decided to move to Vcenter 6.7 and later use it to do updates on all older host's also my old vcenter was a broken install, I could use only vmware windows client, the webclients were not installed and all outdated etc...

So now I started moving one by one, but for now on trial license, cause I was not sure how it controls it, so i will move all hosts from old to new  first, then when all moved, will turn it off and use the license on new one. that should work then.

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bryanvaneeden
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

@Janmail Yes that will work. Since you are already on 6.x licences, you don't need any new ones.

Visit my blog at https://vcloudvision.com!