VCSA Update 6.7 to 7, Essentials license - ESXi license prohibits

[jose_can_u_c]

I have a VCSA 6.5 install on an ESXi 6.5 host -- it's the only thing on this particular machine.  It's licensed with VMWare Essentials (not plus) because I don't need much.

The host machine needs to be retired before it fails and I have a new server ready, with ESXi 7 installed, no guests at the moment. 

At the same time, I have a license now for Essentials on 7.0 and would like to upgrade the VCSA to 7 and have it on the new machine. The VCSA installer makes it look like I can upgrade/migrate from the old VCSA to a new appliance on the new hardware, and in fact that is what I did in the upgrade from 5 to 6.5.

However, the tool is not able to get past checking the source VCenter installation. The logs indicate a bundle of errors in trying to get information from the source machine with the error of "Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation."

Is this because the Essentials license doesn't include some necessary feature for upgrade/migrate? What is the right way to solve this problem?

[asajm]

Hi @jose_can_u_c 

Check

vCenter Server Licensing Options 

According to your scenario, what is the harm in the installation from scratch?

[jose_can_u_c]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I guess the "harm" is that when I migrated from 5 to 6.5, it was very convenient to have the migration tool duplicate all my settings and make it a seamless upgrade.

I wonder, would I be able to put the "old" vCenter host in trial mode, with all abilities unlocked, just for the duration of the migration? If so, how could I do that?

[IRIX201110141]

On paper it should work exactly the way your wish. For sure you can "upgrade" a VCSA and place the new one on a different ESXi during the process.

Guessing around.. 

• New VCSA only can manage ESX 6.5<->7.0. So does the Inventory of your existing VCSA contains ESX 6.0 or some early 6.5.0 versions?
• If you for what ever reasons have create Hostprofiles (during your 60days eval period) ages ago these are outdated and need to be removed first
• Not in your case but same as above would be true for vDS which are version 6.0 for example

What kind of ESXi Version and license is your target one?

Regards,
Joerg

[jose_can_u_c]

The target is ESXi 7.0.2 and all the hosts under the old VCenter are 6.5 or 6.7.

I created no hostprofiles.

The target VCSA is part of Essentials 7 license, but I the installer/upgrader hasn't even gotten to ask about the target for the install yet -- this is just an error in connecting to the existing VCSA appliance and it's host.