Starts off with an couple ESX Servers and Virtual Center all running out of evaluation days… yes I know, procrastination on my part… and to top it off, my Virtual Center Server (which was a VM, and yes its a supported configuration) was off. When attempting to turn the server back on, the screen barked at me with a message stating that I did not have the proper licensing to do that. Well what does one do? You cheat How you say? Create a temporary license from your vmware login/manage licenses. Since the ESX Server is out of eval, you create yourself a nice little lic file and select host based licensing. Once you have the licensing in place you should be able to boot up virtual center. Once you have virtual center up and running, change all licensing to License Server-based Licensing. But be warned, if you let everything including Virtual Center Server run out of eval days, you may have to completely uninstall and reinstall VMWare Virtual Center, this includes SQL Server Express(if you chose to use it) Oh and before uninstalling SQL from Add/Remove Programs, remove “VMWare Update Manager” and “VMWare Virtual Center” from ODBC System DSN Tab.

How do I know all this? Spend 3 hours on the phone with a VMWare Licensing expert and a VMware Technical Engineer, and you will too!

NS