Let’s be
honest, licensing each ESXi host we place on the environment is a tedious task right, so why not automatize
it ?!?
The
majority of environments I’ve been working with just have a single bulk of licenses,
deciding what license to choose doesn't need much thought ; )
The
solution has been always there, documented at ESXi Installation Guide.
Let’s see
how to set up Bulk licensing.
You will
need PowerCli to execute it.
If you are not familiar with that, I recommend to start reading PowerCli basics.
- start
PowerCli;
- connect to
the vCenter you will set up the licenses;
First thing
is to bind license manager to a variable, so we can reference it in the future
- run: $licenseDataManager =
Get-LicenseDataManager
You can assign
a license to a specific Cluster or an Entirely Datacenter, that way the host
will be licensed depending on where it will be added to. I’ll add it to my
datacenter, so every host on this datacenter will get the same license.
- run: $hostContainer = Get-Datacenter -Name “Datacenter_name”
Now it comes the magic, create the
reference for your license
- run: $licenseData
= New-Object VMware.VimAutomation.License.Types.LicenseData
- run: $licenseKeyEntry = New-Object Vmware.VimAutomation.License.Types.LicenseKeyEntry
- run : $licenseKeyEntry.TypeId = "vmware-vsphere”
- run: $licenseKeyEntry.LicenseKey = "Your
license goes here"
Then you
associate them together
- run: $licenseData.LicenseKeys += $licenseKeyEntry
Last step is to tie up the license with the datacenter we selected above
-run: $licenseDataManager.UpdateAssociatedLicenseData($hostContainer.Uid,
$licenseData)
To make sure license has been configured and tied together properly you can run:
$licenseDataManager.QueryAssociatedLicenseData($hostContainer.Uid)
The output should be similar to the
screen bellow
Now, let's make it a try !!!
I do have an
ESXi host using an evaluation license
Just removed
the host from my inventory and added it back to the Datacenter where my bulk
license is set up.
As we can see
it has been licensed immediately.
One thing to notice is if your host is already licensed it wont get a new one.
Bye bye boring
task ; )
