If you just need to test something for 60 days, you can create a free account on the VMware Customer Connect portal and download a fully functional 60-day trial of vCenter 8.
Infrastructure-as-code to apply licenses during vCenter deployment. vcenter 8 license github
Since Broadcom acquired VMware, the licensing landscape has shifted dramatically. If you just need to test something for
Because of this, old GitHub repositories listing "Essentials" keys are likely invalid for vCenter 8. Because of this