VMware follows an honor system for vRealize Network Insight licensing, which means any violation in the license count, you see a warning message on the user interface, but does not restrict you from using the available features.

You see a license warning messages on all the pages of the UI in the following scenarios:
  • License usage exceeds for socket (CPU) license.

    You must add an additional license to support your requirements.

  • Mixed license type
    • When you have added both Advanced license and Enterprise license.

      After you upgrade from the Advanced edition to the Enterprise edition, you must delete the Advanced license manually (Settings > License and Usage). Ensure that you have sufficient number of Enterprise licenses to use the Enterprise features.

    • When you have added a socket license and a core license.

      Delete one of the license types based on your requirement.

License Usage Calculation

vRealize Network Insight license usage is calculated based on the following ratio.

Object Description Object Count allowed per socket License
VMware vSphere CPUs Total number of CPU Sockets of on-premise host machines 1
VMware Cloud Hosts on AWS Total number of VMware Cloud on AWS hosts 0.5
Note: One VMC host requires two socket licenses.
AWS vCPUs or Azure Total number of vCPUs of AWS instances or Azure 16
Non-VMware endpoints Total number of non-internet and non-VMware endpoints appearing in flows that are exclusively reported by Non-VMware flow reporting capabilities (for example, a netflow coming from a physical switch) 15
Note: vRealize Network Insight considers disabled datasources also during calculation of license usage. If you want vRealize Network Insight to ignore them during counting, delete the data sources.

SD-WAN License

To add VMware SD-WAN as a data source and view your VMware SD-WAN deployment in vRealize Network Insight, you must add an VMware SD-WAN license. You can add the VMware SD-WAN license as a standalone license, or you can use it with an Enterprise license. But you cannot use an VMware SD-WAN license with an Advance license. You can use multiple VMware SD-WAN license keys to support Edges of a different bandwidths.

With the VMware SD-WAN license, addition to VMware SD-WAN data source, you can also add vCenter without IPFIX, switches and routers, and Infoblox.