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How to check if your vCenter Server is using vSphere+ / vSAN+ Subscription?

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Once a vCenter Server has been converted to a vSphere+ and/or vSAN+ subscription, entitlements and usage for both vCenter Server and their respective ESXi hosts is all managed through the use of VMware Cloud Console as shared in this recent blog post.

If you are logged into your vCenter Server, how do you check whether it is using a vSphere+ / vSAN+ subscription or not?


Using the vSphere UI, you will see a new Subscription entry on the left hand side when selecting the vCenter Server inventory under Configure->Settings->Subscription which will indicate that this vCenter Server is using vSphere+ / vSAN+ subscription. You will also find a similiar UI entry for each ESXi host that is managed by that vCenter Server, but this is actually irrelevant because all ESXi hosts are automatically subscribed once you have converted your vCenter Server to subscription.

How about checking whether a vCenter Server is using a subscription via Automation?

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How to automate checking for new vCenter Server updates in vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)?

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A question that I had received during VMware Explore Barcelona, was how to automate the checking for new updates that are available for their vCenter Server? In the vSphere UI, when a new update is available and applicable, you will see a new blue label called Update Available under the Summary view when your vCenter Serve inventory object is selected.


When you click on the label, it will take you the vCenter Server Update Planner, a feature that was introduced back in vSphere 7, which is part of the overall vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) solution.


Here you will be shown a list of all applicable vCenter Server update(s) and/or upgrade(s) for your specific version of vCenter Server, including useful information like severity and even direct links to the release notes, which is extremely useful to quickly get a glance at a particular release.

As you might expect, all of the information displayed within the vSphere UI is available programmatically using the vCenter Server vLCM REST API, enabling users to periodically check when an update is available and create and run interoperability reports using the vCenter Server Update Planner feature.

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Is the vCenter Server Unique ID still important today?

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When I was a customer back in the day, one of my operational checklist items for deploying a vCenter Server was to configure the vCenter Server ID and ensure that it was unique from other vCenter Servers within my environment.


The vCenter Server ID is a value between 0-63 that is randomly generated by default, but it can updated by a user after the vCenter Server has been deployed.

Why should you care about the vCenter Server ID? vCenter Server uses this ID to generate Virtual Machine MAC Addresses and if two vCenter Servers have the same ID, it can potentially generate duplicate VM MAC Addresses as explained in this VMware KB 1024025.

With this background in mind, is having a unique vCenter Server ID still relavent and applicable today in 2022?

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