Unable to remove vSAN Trial License from vCenter Cluster

[aabel116]

Does anyone know how to remove a vsan trial license from a cluster? When I try to remove the trial license, it says it's assigned, but there is no usage, and cannot be removed. I trialed it a while ago, but since disabled, turned vSAN off, cleaned all the disks, and made sure it was totally disabled.  However, I get a nag-warning everytime anyone logs into vCenter that I have expired licenses. Even disabling the alarm doesn't work. Support says it's not possible, which I find hard to believe.

I'm sure I could create a new cluster, and move everything over, but I'm using the full stack of NSX, so deploying ESGs to the new cluster would cause a brief outage. There has to be a way to reset the vsan license component so I can remove it.

Any ideas?

[lzhan]

Got the same issue. Finally figured out based on VMware Knowledge Base KB-2115869

1. *** Make a snapshot of your vCenter ***

2. Stop the VMware Security Token Service and VMware Identity Management Service. Ref: VMware Knowledge Base​ KB-2109881

3. Download and install JXplorer

4. Connect to vCenter through JXplorer (step 5, 6 of KB 2115869).

5. Check every AssetEntry_domain under: Services > LicenseService. Confirm from vmwLicSvcAssetName to make sure they really link to the clusters in vCenter.

6. Delete the affected AssetEntry_domain entries.

7. Reboot vCenter server.

After reboot, the Evaluation license should not be there any more.

[rjblogger]

Can the step "Stop the VMware Security Token Service and VMware Identity Management Service" still be done in the HTML5 GUI, in vCenter 7.0? The instructions in KB-2109881 are outdated and only work in older GUIs.