ESXi 5.5 - extend or workaround evaluation license?

Hello VMware friends!

Since VMware sacked the beloved VMTN subscription (probably by some fucking douche in a suit) life for admins running VMware ESXi in labs and development is now a pain in the ass.

I want to discuss the easiest way to extend the life span in a VMware lab environment without re-installing ESXi hosts every time. Calling VMware and ask for a new license is not one of them. Trust me. Re-installing the host with scripts that configure all settings is too much of a pain as well. Obviously, I cannot buy licenses.

What I can see, resetting the eval key is the best way. There are a few guides on that, but that seems to be applicable to older versions.

So, my two lab ESXi 5.5 hosts are connected to a licensed vCenter. Previously they were running on eval that have now expired.

I have tried this, does not work on ESXi 5.5

• At the console; login

• Enable Local Tech Support Mode

• Press Alt-F1 to get to the login prompt

• Login as root

• cd /etc/vmware

• rm-r vmware.lic

• rm-r license.cfg

• services.sh -restart (also tried reboot)

• If you have this ESXi host in a cluster, remove it and then add it again using a Evaluation Mode

Also, creating a new vmware.lic containing serial 00000-00000-00000-00000-00000 (that serial is used by 5.5 in eval mode) does not work.

Evaluation mode is not available when adding the host back to the vCenter Server.

So, anyone succeeded with this on ESXi 5.5? Or do you have another solution?

Please share!

vSphere 5.5 released and we are evaluating the features of our brand new hypervisor with our evaluation license. Evaluation period is 60 days but do you think 60 days is not enough to keep your hands dirty with ESXi 5.5 .It will be time consuming to re-install ESXi 5.5 every 60 days after your evaluation license is expired. Don’t worry, VMware provide us with the Free ESXi 5.5 Hypervisor with no more physical RAM hard limit.

Download the VMware ESXi 5.5 Free Hypervisor installer image along with free license keys.

Register or Login with your VMware account credentials

Download Now and Complete your End to End P2v Migrations using VMware Arena’s “P2V ADMIN ISO“

Once you have logged in , You will have been provided with the option to download the ESXi 5.5 Installation ISO and VMware vSphere client along with the Free license key for ESXi 5.5 Hypervisor.

Once the installers are download. Complete the ESXi 5.5 installation or Upgrade and Connect to your ESXi host using vSphere Client.

Click on Configuration tab and select Licensed Features. Click on Edit

Enter the license key and Click on Ok.

You are done with the ESXi 5.5 free license key assignment and it is never Expires now. I believe this is informative for you. Thanks for Reading !!!