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Quick Tip - VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 provisioning fails with Update SDDC Manager with Licensing Information

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Since the introduction of the License Later feature with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1.1, I typically deploy my VCF lab without needing any license keys and simply take advantage of the built-in 60 day evaluation period.

I was doing some testing recently with the latest VCF 5.2 release, which had just GA'ed last week and I wanted to use my new VCF licenses which included vCenter Server, ESXi, vSAN and NSX and right before the deployment was about to finish, I ran into the following error Update SDDC Manager with Licensing Information with Cloud Builder:


I thought the error was strange since my license keys had passed the Cloud Builder pre-check, so I had assumed the issue must be something else but after looking at the log file /var/log/operationsmanager.log on SDDC Manager:

Unable to decode the license key XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-YYYYY

com.vmware.licensecheck.SerialNumException: Invalid serial number: no dormant license file corresponding to the serial number

....

"errorCode":"LICENSE_KEY_NOT_RECOGNISED","arguments":[],"message":"The SDDC Manager is unable to recognize the license key. Try applying the license key to the product.","remediationMessage":"Try applying the license key to the product."

I quickly saw what the problem was which is that SDDC Manager is missing certain dormant license file (DLF) to decode several of the VCF license keys including the new vSAN TiB license which is only supported with vSphere 8.0 Update 3 and later.
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Downgrading new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licenses to 7.x

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When you access your new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) license in the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP), it is delivered using the new solution license key type  which can activate multiple components within a VVF or VCF deployment.

By default, VVF and VCF licenses will come entitled for latest vSphere 8.0 Update 2b and VCF 5.1.1 respectively, because those are the minimum versions that support the new solution license key type. With that said, users can also downgrade their existing VVF and VCF licenses to support earlier vSphere 8.x and 7.x releases using the BSP license management system, which was something I had recently learned about and went through the process myself, so here is what it looks like end-to-end.

Note: License downgrade requires both user downgrade permissions in the BSP license management as well as using non-NFR licenses, which can obtained through the BSP self-service "Trials and Beta" or internally for employees. For NFR licenses, downgrade is not available.

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Decoding vSphere (vCenter/ESXi), vSAN & Tanzu License Keys

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For most users, you probably have a large collection of vSphere license keys that have been provisioned over the years and keeping track of the product SKU, entitled features and capacity can be a challenge, especially if you are just looking at the raw 25 character license string.

While the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) is recommended for all license management operations(view, split, merge, etc), did you know you could also use vCenter Server to help decode a particular license key?

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