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Logging into vCenter when vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) is disconnected from vSphere+ Cloud Service

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As part of setting up access to the vSphere+ / vSAN+ Cloud Service, a vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) is deployed into your on-premises infrastructure and serves as a gateway between your vCenter Server(s) and the VMware Cloud Console.

If the VCGW has connectivity issues to the VMware Cloud Console for whatever reason, your infrastructure and workloads continue to run but you will not be able to perform any operations through the VMware Cloud Console until connectivity is restored.

UPDATE (06/21/23) - The period in which VMware declares a VCGW unreachable has been updated from 24hrs to 7 days. This means even if your VCGW loses connectivity, you will still be able to login to your on-premises vCenter Server and/or SDDC Manager without needing to go to emergency URL.

However, if you attempt to login into your on-premises vCenter Server(s) using the vSphere UI, you may be surprised to find the following error message.


The message may looking alarming at first about not being able to login, but can still login even if connectivity between the VCGW and VMware Cloud Console has been lost.

While I will agree the user experience may not very intuitive, the hint is in the URL link below where it says "Still having connection problems?"

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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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Automating subscription and usage retrieval for vSphere+ and vSAN+ Cloud Service

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As a follow-up from my earlier blog post which helps customers inventory their current on-premises vSphere/vSAN CPU usage for use with vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ Cloud Services, this post will focus on how customers can easily inventory their vSphere+ and vSAN+ subscription usage, both manually and through some automation.


Once your on-premises vCenter Server has been converted into a subscription, all usage and billing information is now managed through the VMware Cloud Console (vmc.vmware.com), rather than the License section of the vSphere UI. In fact, you will find that the vSphere UI will be updated to include a new Subscriptions tab which provides a direct link to both the vSphere+ and vSAN+ Cloud Service.

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