Getting detailed VMware license information with Powershell

I have showed you before how to access the License Manager with the Powershell VMware VI Toolkit. But the properties of the License Manager appear to only reflect the Virtual Center License Information. So how do we get information about licensing for each individual ESX Server?
We need to take a look at the methods of the License Manager.
First, we connect to the License Manager:

$SI = Get-View ServiceInstance
$LM = Get-View $SI.Content.LicenseManager

Examine the methods of the License Manager:

$LM | Get-Member -MemberType method

Lets see how the QueryLicenseUsage method works:

$LM.QueryLicenseUsage

It requires one parameter host of type ManagedObjectReference. So we need a reference to a VMHost:

$VMHostView = Get-VMHost “NAME” | Get-View

$VMHostRef = $VMHostView.MoRef

Now we can call the method:

$LicUse = $LM.QueryLicenseUsage($VMHostRef)

Useful information includes:

$LicUse.Source.LicenseServer   # Contains the license server name and port

$LicUse.ReservationInfo   # Contains license information for each feature available

To find more information about each feature, take a look at the FeatureInfo property of the License Manager:

$LM.FeatureInfo

Now, you can take the info you need and use it in your scripts.

Enjoy!

Hugo

_{»crosslinked«}

Related posts:

1. Calculate vSphere 5 Licenses with Powershell (UPDATED)
2. Remove vmware memory limits with Powershell