how to assign esxi license

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After deploying new VMware vSphere 8.0 products, I was seeing MANAGE YOUR LICENSES (There are expired or expiring licenses in your inventory) warning on the vCenter vSphere Client ui portal top bar. This article focuses on assigning licenses to vCenter server or ESXi host.

Installation Articles VMware ESXi 8.0 step by step Installation guide with Screenshots How to Install & Deploy vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 8.0

To assign new licenses, Click on MANAGE YOUR LICENSES  button. Alternatively you can click 3 line button left top side and in the navigation pane go to the path Administration >> Licensing >> Licenses . 

In Licenses tab, There is only one Evaluation mode License available, Click  ADD option to add license in the inventory. 

New Licenses wizard opens. Enter License Keys (one per line). Click Next . In the Edit license name s, type name (It shows the detailed information about license). Click Next . In the last, on the  Ready to Complete  page validate information of license product and click Finish . As you can see from the screenshot This license is for ESXi server system.

License is added but state is Unassigned, You can see other information such as usage, capacity expiration date etc.

To assign this license to ESXi server, Go to Assets tab, Choose HOSTS , Select checkbox for ESXi servers from the Assets list (All are in Evaluation mode). Click ASSIGN LICENSE hyperlink. 

In the Assign License Wizard, Under Existing Licenses  choose the correct license key just added (Some features will become unavailable based on the licenses, check details for more information). Click OK .

Verify ESXi server is assigned with a new license and not in Evaluation mode (60 day trial) now. To Assign Licenses for v Center Server systems, vSAN Clusters, SuperVisors (Kubernetes) and other solutions follow the same step and select the correct asset.

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Licensing an ESX host using the command line (1007955)

This article provides steps to license an ESX host using the command line.

To license an ESX 3.5 host using the command line:

• Open an SSH Client like putty from your Windows desktop and connect to the ESX host as root.
• Run the following command to license the host: $ vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source <file/server/eval> <ip address or hostname of license server> --edition <none/starter/full/basic/vdi> Substituting appropriate values where applicable. For example: $ vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source server licence.vmware.com --edition full
• VMware ESX Server
• VMware ESX Server 3.5.x

Bytes of virtualization with bits of other technology.

How to assign vsphere 7 licenses, april 14, 2020 virtuadmin.

Quick byte today – Here is a tutorial on how to assign VMware vSphere 7 licenses.

When you first install ESXi (or vCenter), you will have a 60-day evaluation license to dive into the full set of features. These evaluation features are equivalent to that of a vSphere Enterprise Plus license which includes vSphere vMotion, High Availability (HA), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Virtual Machine Encryption, Distributed Switches, etc. Durng this time, the Licenses tab will indicate you are Evaluation Mode. When you are ready to assign your official license, it just takes a few steps. Below we will walk through how to assign licenses through ESXi and vCenter.

How to Assign VMware Licenses From ESXi

Under Navigator , select Host and then Manage. From Manage, select the Licensing tab and click Assign License.

From Assign License, add your License Key and click Check License.

If successful, the license will indicate it is valid for the pertinent version. Click Assign License.

Once the license is installed, navigate back to Licensing to verify your license was validated.

How to Assign VMware Licenses From vCenter

Licenses can also be applied from vCenter. If you have a license in evaluation mode or an expiring license, there will be a notification banner indicating there are expired or expiring licenses in you inventory.

To assign a license click Manage Your Licenses from the aforementioned banner or click the Menu drop-down and select Administration.

Next, click Licenses and select the Assets tab. In this instance we will be assigning a license to a single asset (e.g. vCenter); however, if you need to assign multiple licenses you can do that from the Licenses tab. Under Assets, select the pertinent asset and click Assign Asset.

Click the New License tab. Enter the License Key and click Ok .

That’s it! The asset will reflect the license and new expiration date.

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Managing licenses on ESXi hosts using the vSphere Web Client

A new day, a new video!

In this video we discuss and demonstrate managing licenses on ESXi hosts in vSphere 5.1 using the vSphere Web Client .

You can use the license management function in the vSphere Web Client to manage the licensing of assets in your vSphere environment from a central location. You can add license keys in the vCenter Server inventory, assign license keys to multiple assets at a time, view information about the available products and licenses, and export licensing information in a CSV file.

To be able to use certain features and functionality of an ESXi host, you must assign it a license key when the evaluation period of the host expires.

For more information, see VMware Knowledge Base article:  Managing licenses on ESXi hosts using the vSphere Web Client (2032903) .

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How to Assign VMware ESXi License Key

No doubt VMware is the pioneer in virtualization world. VMware can be used either premium or free based on licensing. In the previous article, I discussed how to install VMware ESXi on a physical server or machine and then I also discussed how to get VMware ESXi free license from VMware website . Getting VMware ESXi license key either premium or free, we may sometimes get confused how to assign the license key in VMware ESXi host. So, in this article I will show the steps to assign VMware ESXi license key on VMware ESXi 7 Hypervisor.

Steps to Assign VMware ESXi License Key

After getting VMware ESXi license key either premium or free, we need to assign the license key in our ESXi host. The following steps will show how to assign license key in VMware ESXi host from web console.

Login to ESXi web client with root user credentials and then go to Navigator panel and click on Manage link. Manage panel will appear in the right side of the ESXi Web Console.

From the Manage web panel, click on the Licensing tab. The Licensing tab will show the current license and it features. After installing ESXi 7 if do not assign any license key yet, you will find that your ESXi host is in Evaluation Mode. In evaluation mode, you can use all the features offered by VMware ESXi but maximum 60 days. So, you can do any R&D in ESXi Host within this period. When the evaluation period will be expired, all the VMs will be shut down and you cannot power on any VM without assigning license key.

To assign new license key in VMware ESXi Host, click on Assign license link or [click on Action and then click on Assign license option] from Licensing tab. Assign license pop up window will appear where you will be asked to put your license key.

So, put your license key in License key input box and then click on Check license button. If your license is valid, you will get validation success message and the Check license button will turn into Assign license button. Click on Assign license button to apply this license.   

Your license will now be applied and the features related to this license key will be shown in Licensing tab. You will also find a Remove license button to remove your assigned license anytime.

How to assign VMware ESXi license key has been discussed in this article. I hope you will now be able to assign your ESXi license key following the above steps. However, if you face any confusion to assign ESXi license key, feel free to discuss in comment or Contact me from Contact page. I will try my best to stay with you.

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How to Assign a License to VMware ESXi Host

When you prepare to run VMware ESXi in vSphere environment, you need to get a license key first. This article will introduce how to assign a license to ESXi host.

By Crystal / Updated on March 8, 2023

• Way 1. Add license to ESXi host via Web Client

Way 2. Assign a license to ESXi host via vSphere Client

Overview of vmware esxi license.

VMware licenses are 25-character strings that includes letters and digits, divided into 5-character blocks with the “-” symbol. The license keys contain encrypted information about the purchased product edition and are not tied to hardware. You can assign the same VMware ESXi license key to multiple ESXi hosts until the total number of processors exceeds the CPU (central processing unit) capacity allowed by the license.

ESXi hosts are licensed with VMware vSphere licenses on a per-processor basis.  VMware ESXi free is more suitable for personal environment or family lab since it has multiple limitations on vStorage API, CPU, memory size, etc. For enterprise running multiple VMs, it’d better to add a paid license to ESXi host, which enables third-party backup tools to interact with the hypervisor directly and increase the high-availability of virtual machines. For ESXi Evaluation version, it’s better to add a license until the evaluation period expires.

This article introduces how to add license to ESXi host step by step.

Note : A multicore CPU is counted as one CPU if the number of physical CPU cores is not higher than 32. If a CPU has more than 32 cores, then an additional CPU license must be applied. The amount of RAM and the number of running VMs are not limited by VMware licenses.

How to add license to ESXi host (2 Ways)

There are 2 ways to add a license to ESXi host. You can choose follow of them to get started.

Way 1. Add license to ESXi host via Web Client

1. Open VMware ESXi web and enter the IP address of the ESXi host that you want to license.

2. Select Manage , then click on Licensing >> Assign license .

3. In the opened wizard, enter the license key and click Check license to verify whether the license key is valid. If you see the green icon, please select Assign license to add this license to the ESXi host.

4. Back to the Licensing tab, you can notice the information of the ESXi host which shows the license has been successfully added to VMware ESXi host.

1. Login to VMware vSphere Client.

2. Access to Hosts and Clusters , select your Datacenter, then click on an ESXi host with license.

3. Select Configuration >> Licensing >> Assign License .

4. In the Assign License window, you can assign an existing license that has unused CPUs to ESXi host if you added multiple license keys to vCenter. And you can also assign a new license key to VMware ESXi host. For example, select New License .

5. Enter the license key, then type a name for the license. Click OK .

6. In the Assign License dialog box, select the newly created license, and click OK .

No matter which ESXi license you use, you should back up your virtual machines regularly for data protection.

Free and agentless backup solution for licensed VMware ESXi host

For VMware ESXi backup, it’s available for you to clone VM , copy files of virtual machine and export VM to OVF. However, these methods usually require you to do them manually and one-by-one, making it difficult to take advantage of the benefits of licensed VMware ESXi - centralized backup and management.

To protect virtual machines in batch and simplify the data management, it's best to use a professional backup software. Here I will use the free VMware backup software  -  AOMEI Cyber Backup  as an example. It supports VMware ESXi 6.0-7.0 except ESXi hosts using the free ESXi license due to disabled VMware APIs. It is an agentless backup tool that offers automatic and flexible backups for VMware ESXi virtual machines. With this professional backup tool, you can schedule comprehensive backup tasks for free.

Perpetual Free : No time limit for AOMEI Cyber Backup Free Edition. Support Free ESXi : AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi. Agentless Backup : Backup virtual machines at host level without installing agent on each VM, reducing O&M costs. Automate VMware Backup : Run VM backup tasks automatically to offer continuous VM protection and reduce human errors. Instant Disaster Recovery : Once the VMware crashes, quickly restore VMware to normal state and easily migrate VM to another host. Role-Assignment : allow one administrator to create sub-accounts with limited privilege, effectively reduce administration cost and manual errors.

Please hit the button below to download and use AOMEI Cyber Backup for free:

*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.

Safeguard VMware ESXi backup for free:

1. Click Backup Task >> Create New Task to schedule VMware ESXi backups.

2. In the opened wizard, enter the Task Name and select VMware ESXi Backup .

✦  In Device Name section, select one or more virtual machines to back up simultaneously.

✦  In Target section, specify a location to store VM backups such as network or local place. If you connect to NAS, you can easily backup VM to NAS .

✦  In Schedule section, enable schedule task and choose full/incremental/differential backup, then specify backup time and frequency as daily/weekly/monthly.

✦  Click Start Backup . From the drop-down menu, you can decide to perform backup later or now.

3.  Restore : You can restore the whole VM and virtual environment within a few clicks. It doesn’t require any complicated reinstallation and configuration.

✍ While the Free Edition covers most of the VM backup needs, you can also upgrade to Premium Edition to enjoy: ✦ Batch VM Backup : Batch backup large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server or standalone ESXi hosts. ✦ Backup Cleanup : Configure retention policy to auto delete the old backup files and save storage space. ✦ Restore to new location : Easily make a clone of a virtual machine in the same or another datastore/host, without reinstalling or configuring a new VM.

This article describes how to add license to ESXi host. You can assign a license in VMware Host Client for a standalone ESXi host and in VMware vSphere Client for ESXi hosts that are managed by vCenter Server .

No matter which ESXi license you use, you should back up your virtual machines regularly, which protects your data and business security.

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VMware vSphere is VMware's virtualization platform, which transforms data centers into aggregated computing infrastructures that include CPU, storage, and networking resources. vSphere manages these infrastructures as a unified operating environment, and provides you with the tools to administer the data centers that participate in that environment.

The two core components of vSphere are ESXi and vCenter Server . ESXi is the virtualization platform where you create and run virtual machines and virtual appliances. vCenter Server is the service through which you manage multiple hosts connected in a network and pool host resources.

Want to know what is in the current release of vSphere? Look at the latest vSphere release notes.

Learn About Some of Our Features

You can only deploy or upgrade to vCenter Server using an appliance. The vCenter Server appliance contains all the Platform Services Controller services from earlier releases, preserving all previous functionality, including authentication, certificate management , and licensing.

vSphere 8.0 introduces vSphere Distributed Services Engine that provides the ability to offload some of the infrastructure functions from a server CPU to a data processing unit (DPU). A DPU device features multiple embedded CPU cores, memory, and a trimmed version of an ESXi hypervisor that runs on the server. DPUs are pre-configured devices that you can use for network acceleration. You manage the life cycle of the software and firmware that runs on a DPU device by using vSphere Lifecycle Manager images workflows.

Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager as a centralized and simplified lifecycle management mechanism for VMware ESXi hosts. With vSphere Lifecycle Manager you can manage ESXi hosts by using images and baselines at the cluster level. You can also convert a cluster that uses baselines into a cluster that uses vSphere Lifecycle Manager images . In vSphere 8.0 you can start using vSphere Configuration Profiles to manage the configuration of the hosts in a cluster collectively. You first set up a desired configuration at the cluster level and then, in a single operation, you can apply the configuration to all hosts in the cluster.

Learn how to use vSphere with Tanzu to transform vSphere into a platform for running Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer. With this functionality, you can enable a vSphere cluster to run Kubernetes workloads by configuring it then as a Supervisor . DevOps engineers and application developers can then run containerized applications on vSphere Namespaces by deploying vSphere Pod , VMs, and upstream Kubernetes clusters through Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with vSphere . You can deploy a Supervisor on vSphere Zones to provide high-availability to your workloads at cluster level as one vSphere Zone maps to one vSphere cluster. Workloads that you run on a Supervisor deployed on zones are distributed on the vSphere clusters that are part of the zones and are protected against cluster-level failure. To keep your vSphere with Tanzu environment up to date, backup and restore, and troubleshoot, learn how to maintain vSphere with Tanzu .

You can view available vCenter Server updates and upgrades and produce interoperability reports about VMware products associated with vCenter Server using Update Planner. You can also generate pre-update reports that let you make sure your system meets the minimum software and hardware requirements for a successful upgrade of vCenter Server . The report provides information about problems that might prevent the completion of a software upgrade, and actions you can take to remedy those problems.

You can use centralized license management to manage licenses for ESXi hosts, vCenter Server , vSAN clusters, and other VMware solutions. Learn how to use the VMware vSphere Client to manage licenses in your vCenter Server environment .

Learn how to configure networking for vSphere, including how to create vSphere distributed switches and vSphere standard switches , monitor networks to analyze the traffic between virtual machines (VMs) and hosts , and manage network resources . vSphere networking is one of the most critical components in your environment, as it is how your ESXi hosts and VMs communicate.

You can learn about vSphere storage to help you plan a storage strategy for your virtual data center. You can also learn how to configure and use the virtualized and software-defined storage technologies that ESXi and vCenter Server provide. vSphere supports several storage technologies for both traditional and software-defined storage environments.

Learn how to secure your environment using vSphere security features and best practices to safeguard your environment from attack. vSphere provides comprehensive, built-in security, delivering secure applications, infrastructure, data, and access.

You can provide business continuity using vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) and vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT). vCenter HA provides failover protection against hardware and operating system outages within your virtualized IT environment. If there is a host failure, Fault Tolerance provides continuous protection for a VM.

You can use resource pools, clusters, vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), vSphere Distributed Power Management (DPM), and vSphere Storage I/O Control to manage and allocate resources for ESXi hosts and vCenter Server .

Try Our Deployment and Planning Tools

The following resources are designed to help you plan your vSphere data center deployment, and effectively manage your vSphere environment.

• vSphere Hardware and Guest Operating System Compatibility Guides . An online reference that shows what hardware, converged systems, operating systems, third-party applications, and VMware products are compatible with a specific version of a VMware software product.
• VMware Product Interoperability Matrices . Provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware vSphere components, including ESXi , vCenter Server , and other VMware products.
• VMware Configuration Maximums . When you configure, deploy, and operate your virtual and physical equipment, you must stay at or below the maximums supported by your product. The limits presented in the Configuration Maximums tool are tested limits supported by VMware.

Access Developer and Automation Documentation

VMware Developer is a website dedicated to our developer and automation community. To learn about vSphere APIs, SDKs, and command-line interfaces, visit these VMware Developer resources:

• VMware SDKs
• VMware APIs
• VMware command-line interfaces under Automation Tools

Explore Our Videos

You can learn about deploying, managing, and administering vSphere by reading the documentation, and by watching videos on the VMware Information Experience video channel .

Learn More About vSphere

To learn about vSphere and data center virtualization, see the following resources.

• Learn more about vSphere by visiting the vSphere Product Page .
• Ask questions about vSphere by visiting the vSphere Community Forum . You can get help, opinions, and feedback from other VMware users by participating in the discussion forums.
• Explore vSphere without having to install it using the VMware vSphere Hands-on Labs environment.
• Learn about the solutions vSphere provides to help you overcome your IT challenges, and create a more efficient digital infrastructure by visiting Cloud Platform Tech Zone and vSphere White Papers and Technical Notes .
• Read the latest products announcements, technical articles, and operations guidance from VMware on the vSphere Blog .
• Learn about benchmarking, performance architectures, and other performance-focused topics at the blog VMware VROOM! , maintained by VMware's Performance Engineering team.
• Visit the William Lam blog, which focuses on automation, integration, and operation of the VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC). William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working at VMware.

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You can create custom documentation collections, containing only the content that meets your specific information needs, using MyLibrary .

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Two Steps to Manage this Licensing for vCenter. Please note the same we can do for ESXi Hosts.

• Step#1 Add License Key to Virtual Center
• Step#2 Assign License to Virtual Center

Manage License Key for Virtual Center Server:-

Step#1 - add license key to virtual center.

• Login to Virtual Center using Web or vSphere Client. Here we have logged in thrugh Web Client.
• On top of console, you can see the note saying that licenses in our inventory either expired or not available.
• Go to Home > Click on Licenses under Administration Tab
• Click on Manage your Licenses in Getting Started Tab or Go to Licenses Tab.
• Click on + icon to Create New Licenses .
• Enter the vCenter Server 6.x Standard license key and press Enter to add a new line.
• Enter the vSphere 6.x Standard license key(For ESXi), and click Next.
• Label the license keys as per your convinient. Click on Next .
• Your Licenses have been added here. Now let's move to Step#2 to Assign Licenses.

Step#2 - Assign License to Virtual Center

• Go to Licenses Option and and Click on Manage Your Assets under Getting Started tab. It will redirect you to Assets Tab.
• Under Assets Tab > Go to vCenter Server Systems (To Assign License to Virtual Center). Do the same for ESXi Host in Hosts Tab if you want to assign License to ESXi Host.
• Click on Firts Icon -> to Assign License
• Select License and Click on OK .
• vCenter Server is Licensed Now. Enjoy Managing the Inventory.

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