Although customers may purchase vSphere 4 licenses, they may wish to implement or expand their deployment of the previous version. Therefore, we allow customers who purchase vSphere 4 to downgrade their licenses via the Licensing Portal. Customers who downgrade vSphere 4 continue to have access to both versions however must not deploy licenses in excess of their entitlement. For example, if a customer purchases 20 CPUs of vSphere Advanced, they may downgrade to 20 CPUs of VI Standard. Customers may deploy no more than 20 CPUs in total, but may choose to mix and match between vSphere and VI3. The downgrade mapping for vSphere and vCenter is as follows:
Downgrade process via VMware Licensing Portal
• Only whole orders can be downgraded
• After approx. 30 minutes, additional license quantity is added to VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) License Portal
• Licenses displayed on VMware license portal will not be decreased or affected
1. Login to your Licensing Portal and click "Downgrade".
2. Select the order you wish to downgrade and click the "Continue" button.
3. Before you proceed any further, you will see:
• Confirmation page to review downgrade operation
• Click "Confirm" to proceed with downgrade operation
4. Downgrades are not processed in real-time, it takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.
5. Click "OK" to continue.
6. Once the downgrade is complete, you can check the VI3 license portal for the downgrade licenses.
