ESXi

Fresh install of ESXi 5.5 on 2 hosts and a virtual 5.5 vCenter installed on Server 2012 R2.

I initially licensed the hosts and vCenter with our internal licenses which worked fine (Enterprise plus), I then needed to move over to licenses that the customer had purchased (Essentials), so I removed the licenses and put the hosts and vCenter back onto the trial licenses which worked fine. I then went to install the new license codes through the vCenter and I keep getting an error message of "invalid keys" and under details it says "License error: 5 Diagnostic message: License file not found"

I've tried copying and pasting the codes and manually typing them in but neither work. There seems to be a fair few articles on google regarding this error, so it's not just me but there's no definitive solution

This is the email I was sent from VMWare, something I read suggested these are activation codes that I need to use in our licensing portal to actually get the license codes but I can't see where to do this.

License Key / Activation Code

VMware vCenter Server 6 Essentials for vSphere (xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

VMware vSphere 6 Essentials for 1 processor (xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks :smileyhappy:

You're trying apply the version 6 licenses on version 5.x host/vCenter ? If yes, unless I'm missing something, you will need downgrade your licenses to version 5.x to this work with your 5.x hosts/vCenter.

Are the licenses specific to version, are they not backwards compatible ?

No if there is major release, for example 5 -> 6, but if is just 5.0 to 5.1 to 5.5, the license 5 is compatible will all release.

Here is how to downgrade your license on MyVMware: VMware KB: How to downgrade license keys in My VMware