how to license vcenter essentials 8 if I don't have an esxi 8 installed

[mooncaptain66]

I have been running esxi 6.7 for a while no vcenter - I want to upgrade to 8. I bought the essentials only license. I have not upgraded or installed esxi 8 because of upgrading vib for raid controller problems. I wanted to use vcenter update manager to see if I could sort through that issue.

My understanding is that there is a version of vcenter for the essentials license. I may have installed the full vcenter version. In any case I only have an evaluation license for vcenter and I can't find a way to license vcenter 8 with the license that I already purchased.

I clearly don't understand how to install the vcenter for essentials or I don't knows how to downgrade the vcenter I already have to the essentials license.

Any help would be useful I have seen documents about the different versions of vcenter but no info on how to download or assign the license.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Essentials Kits consist of one license for an instance of vCenter Server for Essentials, and licenses for up to 3 ESXi hosts (2 CPU socket licenses in total).

Since you've licenses Essentials, you should find the vCenter Server licenses key in you Customer Connect portal.
The binaries for vCenter Server, and ESXi are the same for all editions, it's only the license key which locks/unlocks features.

André

[mooncaptain66 · Accepted solution]

That did it. I had the license in the list but my eye didn't see.