Licensing vCenter 6.0 broken?

[flchristoph]

Hi,

I am trying to license the vCenter Appliance v6.0 through PowerCLI, but I get the following error (99% of the time) after adding the license and connecting my ESXi hosts.

-> Manually reconnecting the hosts shows the same error.

-> After restarting vmware-vpxd service, adding the hosts works

-> Manually adding the vCenter license (through vSphere Client) without restarting vpxd works

Error:

Set-VMHost : 6/30/2015 9:58:17 AM  Set-VMHost

The operation for the entity "esxhost01.lab.local" failed with the following message: "License not available to perform the operation.". The VMware vCenter Server 6 Standard license assigned to vCenter Server VMware vCenter Server has expired. Recommend updating the license.

At line:2 char:1

+ Set-VMHost -VMHost $esx -State Connected -LicenseKey $licesx

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-VMHost], NotEnoughLicenses

  + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Client20_TaskServiceImpl_CheckServerSideTaskUpdates_OperationFailed,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.SetVMHost

Code:

$servInst = Get-View ServiceInstance

$licMgr = Get-View $servInst.Content.licenseManager

$licAssignMgr = Get-View $licMgr.licenseAssignmentManager

$vcUuid = $servInst.Content.About.InstanceUuid

$vcDisplayName = $servInst.Content.About.Name

$licInfo = $licAssignMgr.UpdateAssignedLicense($vcUuid, $licvc,$vcDisplayName)

$ESXhosts = Get-VMhost

foreach ($esx in $ESXhosts) {

    Set-VMHost -VMHost $esx -State Connected -LicenseKey $licesx

}

I have tried (in all possible combinations):

- PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1 (build 2548067)

- PowerCLI 5.5 Release 1 (build 1295336)

- vCenter Appliance 6.0 (build 2559267)

- vCenter Appliance 6.0a (build 2656759 [patched from 6.0])

Never had any issues with this using vCenter 5.5. Any Ideas?

Thanks,

Chris

[LucD]

From the error I would say you don't have sufficient free licenses available.

[flchristoph]

I have enough licenses. Adding the hosts works when I add the licenses manually through vSphere Client or WebClient. I only get the error when I license through PowerCLI (and not restart vpxd).

[Scissor]

The error message you posted hints that the license you are trying to apply has expired:  The VMware vCenter Server 6 Standard license assigned to vCenter Server VMware vCenter Server has expired. Recommend updating the license.

Looking at your posted code, I don't see where the $licesx variable is defined.  Perhaps it is undefined when you run the below set-vmhost command and that is the cause of the error?

Set-VMHost -VMHost $esx -State Connected -LicenseKey $licesx