Upgrading Licenses - What happens to old licenses currently in production?

[Sean_Kane]

Hi All,

This will hopefully be an easy one for you guys. We have to upgrade from vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 6.5 soon. I signed into the licensing area of the myvmware portal and went to the "Upgrade License Keys" area of the licensing portal. The last step of the licensing upgrade is a big nasty warning stating you need to decommission and turn off, get rid of anything running the old license. Yeah, I get that - it's going to happen.

However, I have to travel some considerable distance to a remote datacenter to do this upgrade. I like to be prepared before I travel - can I upgrade the licenses NOW so that I have the v6 keys with me before I arrive instead of doing the key upgrades after I perform the upgrade? Or, if I upgrade my keys/licenses from vSphere 5 to vSphere 6 licenses, will the vSphere 5 licenses no longer "work" in my production environment, thus, trashing my production environment? I find this VERY difficult to believe will happen.

Thanks in advance,
Sean

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

The license key upgrade in the portal will not have a technical impact on the production environment.

Upgrading the license keys too early (while the old keys are still in use) might violate the EULA. However, if you do that just before you start traveling to eliminate any risks with e.g. the portal site being offline, or something similar, I think that should be ok.

André

[Sean_Kane]

Thank you Andre. That's what I was trying to figure out.

Thanks,

Sean