Just thought i'd post to save people the lengthy amusement of getting a successfull arcgis migration.
Step 1 - Use the awesome esxi migration tool to import the vm BE SURE TO RETAIN THE MAC OF THE ESXI nic
Step 2 - Copy the machine UUID to SMIBIOS UUID
Step 3 - install drivers on machine and change the nic to virt io, make disks virtio scsi
Step 4 - the fix that got it working
get the genid and genidx from vsphere > edit settings > advanced > edit config
e.g.
genidx= -2217834359527632614 = E138AB668DB3111A
genid = -7744011957178236574 = 9487BE278C038162
convert to 2's complement signed hex
genidx= E138AB668DB3111A
genid = 9487BE278C038162
then make UUID
last 8 of genid hex = 8C038162
second group of 4 genid hex = be27
first group of 4 genid hex = 9487
last 2 digits of genidx hex then last but 2 of genidx hex = 1a11
split first 12 of genidx hex into 2 bytes and list in reverse = B38D66AB38E1
making a uuid 8C038162-be27-9487-1a11-B38D66AB38E1
then set rge vmgenid of the vm with
qm set {vmid} -vmgenid 8C038162-be27-9487-1a11-B38D66AB38E1
run the machine and the licensing works as it did on esxi, panic over and users will be unaware of migration
Hope this helps someone having licensing issues with arc (or prob spiceworks or anything using flexnet), also if there is an easier way to generate the vmgenid uuid from the esx signed ints i would love to know as it was an interesting puzzle for me.
Step 1 - Use the awesome esxi migration tool to import the vm BE SURE TO RETAIN THE MAC OF THE ESXI nic
Step 2 - Copy the machine UUID to SMIBIOS UUID
Step 3 - install drivers on machine and change the nic to virt io, make disks virtio scsi
Step 4 - the fix that got it working
get the genid and genidx from vsphere > edit settings > advanced > edit config
e.g.
genidx= -2217834359527632614 = E138AB668DB3111A
genid = -7744011957178236574 = 9487BE278C038162
convert to 2's complement signed hex
genidx= E138AB668DB3111A
genid = 9487BE278C038162
then make UUID
last 8 of genid hex = 8C038162
second group of 4 genid hex = be27
first group of 4 genid hex = 9487
last 2 digits of genidx hex then last but 2 of genidx hex = 1a11
split first 12 of genidx hex into 2 bytes and list in reverse = B38D66AB38E1
making a uuid 8C038162-be27-9487-1a11-B38D66AB38E1
then set rge vmgenid of the vm with
qm set {vmid} -vmgenid 8C038162-be27-9487-1a11-B38D66AB38E1
run the machine and the licensing works as it did on esxi, panic over and users will be unaware of migration
Hope this helps someone having licensing issues with arc (or prob spiceworks or anything using flexnet), also if there is an easier way to generate the vmgenid uuid from the esx signed ints i would love to know as it was an interesting puzzle for me.