Moving hosts to new vCenter and retaining current licensing of hosts

[rmtilson1]

I need to upgrade a 4.1 vSphere environment to 5.1u1. I plan on installing a clean 5.1 vCenter and need to migrate the hosts with no downtime to the VMs. The more proper way to removing from the old vCenter cannot be done as it requires the host to be in maintenance mode and VMs be evacuated. What plan on doing is disconnecting the host and having the new vCenter take ownership. I will then eventually incoming days upgrade the hosts via VUM to 5.1u1.

My question is when the new vCenter takes ownership of the hosts what will happen to the licensing of the esx/esxi 4.1 hosts? Will the current esx/esxi 4.1 licensing follow the hosts or will I need to re-add the esx/esxi license through the client? The new vCenter will be installed in trial mode until licensing can be provided to me.

A second question is when the esxi hosts are upgrade to 5.1 and I do not have the upgraded licenses will the hosts enter a grace period until a license can be applied? I am unsure how long the hosts were in evaluation mode before the 4.1 licenses were applied so I am going to assume all 60 days have been used.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - I would get you licenses before you attempt the upgrade - last thing you need will be to lose ahost because it is not licensed.

[rmtilson1]

I agree that licensing should taken care of first but I do not have any access to the licensing. But how would the above scenario work? I would test in a lab environment to see what happen but that is not an option.

If the new vCenter takes ownership of the host will it be added with no licensing, the host license will be carried over or I will have to reapply the esx/esxi license?

I searched for hours and have not found a clear answer and seems like a valid scenario.

What I am not sure is how upgrading the hosts will play out. Will they go into a 14 day grace period or show disconnected due to improper licensing? 

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

With adding the hosts to the new vCenter Server, the host's license key should be added to the vCenter Server's license repository. Even if this would not be the case you could simply add the current license key to the new vCenter Server manually. Just make sure you don't use more CPU licenses than purchased.

Once you upgrade the hosts, ensure you have the new license keys already available. Afaik there's no additional evaluation period for upgraded hosts which were running older versions for more than 60 days. The 14-days grace period you mentioned applied to ESX versions 3.x which used FlexLM licensing (i.e. license files).

André