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ESX 3.5 Licensing while upgrading to vSphere

Hello All I hope someone can help me with a licensing question.

Is there a way I can tell when my ESX 3.5 hosts license will expire without a license server?

Can I take one of my vCenter 4.0 licenses and create ESX 3.5 license file?

Or do I have to rebuild a license server to connect my ESX 3.5 hosts to? Can this be a VM?

If it matters I hope to have all of my hosts built on ESXi 4.0 by the end of July.

Thanks for the help,

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mark_chuman
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You have a 14 day grace period in which to run without a license server. After 14 days certain features (power on VMs) become unavailable. My recommendations:

1. Determine what day the license server was retired.

2. View /var/log/vmkernel, /var/log/messages files on ESX servers to pinpoint the first message regarding no available license server.

3. Project out 14 days from date of license server being removed.

If you decide to try and beat the clock, do nothing. If you decide to get flex license server back up perform below steps:

4. Alter DNS name of license server (name 3.5 ESX servers are pointing to for licensing) to your new 4.0 vCenter server.

5. Install the flex license manager on your 4.0 vCenter server.

6. Ensure 3.5 ESX servers are now licensed.

7. Remove flex license manager when 3.5 ESX servers are gone.

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Troy_Clavell
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Is there a way I can tell when my ESX 3.5 hosts license will expire without a license server?

If your ESX hosts cannot see their license source for more than 14 days you will not be able to power cycle any of your VMs.

Can I take one of my vCenter 4.0 licenses and create ESX 3.5 license file?

you have no access to the old vCenter Server to retrieve the .lic file? If you do, you can install a stand alone license server for your 3.x Hosts.

Or do I have to rebuild a license server to connect my ESX 3.5 hosts to? Can this be a VM?

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_legacy_host_lic.pdf

mark_chuman
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You have a 14 day grace period in which to run without a license server. After 14 days certain features (power on VMs) become unavailable. My recommendations:

1. Determine what day the license server was retired.

2. View /var/log/vmkernel, /var/log/messages files on ESX servers to pinpoint the first message regarding no available license server.

3. Project out 14 days from date of license server being removed.

If you decide to try and beat the clock, do nothing. If you decide to get flex license server back up perform below steps:

4. Alter DNS name of license server (name 3.5 ESX servers are pointing to for licensing) to your new 4.0 vCenter server.

5. Install the flex license manager on your 4.0 vCenter server.

6. Ensure 3.5 ESX servers are now licensed.

7. Remove flex license manager when 3.5 ESX servers are gone.

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Prost
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Thanks for the quick responce, I searched through the logs and couldnt find anything all the way back to May 28, I am just going to install the flex licensing software and move on, Where can I find the flex software Is it on the VC 2.0 CD?

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mark_chuman
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NP. Re-installing is the safest route - considering how quick the install is.

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admin
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The safest option might be to use host-based license files for your ESX 3.x hosts - go to the license portal for that. This protects you from any kind of interruption due to lost license server connections. You would still need to install a Flex license server for your VC 4.0 to be able to manage the 3.5 hosts and enable HA, Vmotion and DRS. It's described in the VC manual how to set this up - it's pretty simple.

Once you've upgraded your hosts to vSphere you can then throw away that Flex server and hopefully forget it ever existed. Smiley Happy

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