vSAN License Issue

[NoonChaser]

I have a question regarding vSAN licensing.

We have plan to upgrade our ESXi, vCenter and VSAN from 6.7 to version 7, the license was already available for them.

So we manage to upgrade the vCenter first and also assign the v7 license but we have encountered a problem with maintenance window and we cannot proceed the upgrade of ESXi therefore we cant upgrade the VSAN too. As I was informed we have to wait for about 3 months to have another maintenance window the problem is that the VSAN cluster is already in evaluation mode as soon as we upgraded the vCenter. So I have the following questions:

1. What happens to vSAN cluster if the 1 month evaluation mode is over?

2. Can we license the vSAN cluster with v7 even though its still in a previous version?

Thanks in advance

[TheBobkin]

@NoonChaser 

1. You won't be able to add/recreate disks/Disk-Groups.

2. Yes, that is fine: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/80691

[NoonChaser]

Hi @TheBobkin I think it answer my question number 1 but for number 2 my question is about if the vSAN Cluster 6.7 in evaluation mode accept my v7 license?

The KB describes that if I don't license my vSAN cluster in evaluation mode I can still use but I cannot utilize the v7 unless I license it.

What I want to do now is license my vSAN cluster using the v7 license without upgrading the vSAN cluster. I want to know if this possible.

May thanks for the response.

[TheBobkin]

Yes, you can apply a v7 license to the cluster while the nodes have ESXi 6.7 installed - that is basically what the kb says.