Licensing for Entuity - Entuity v21.0 upwards

Introduction

Entuity license files

Standalone and Central License Server Licensing

Entuity license types

Assigning license credits

Checking the Entuity license

To upgrade and update the Entuity license

RESTful API

Introduction:

Entuity supports both standalone and distributed (Central License Server) licensing architectures. Entuity licensing checks:

• Entuity version. If you install a new release, you will need a new license.
• license expiry date.
• available modules and integrations.
• number of device and/or object credits available.
• whether the Entuity server machine is the expected machine.
• (for Central License Servers) how many remote servers it can support.

Entuity license files:

Entuity includes an evaluation license, entuity_home\etc\license.30day.eval.dat, which is valid for 30 days from the date of its installation. When using an evaluation license, Entuity will display the days and hours remaining until the license expires.

When you run configure, the default name and install location of a full license is entuity_home\etc\license.dat. However, the license files you receive from your Entuity representative have a unique name, e.g.:

• Standalone server license would have the format: 
  License.Entuity.CustomerName.hostname.UniqueID.dat
• Central License Server license would have the format: License.Entuity.CustomerName.hostname.UniqueID_central_server.dat
• Remote Server license would have the format: License.Entuity.CustomerName.hostname.UniqueID_remote_server.dat

Standalone and Central License Server Licensing:

Standalone licensing.

With standalone licensing, each Entuity server has its own license file. Each Entuity server's license:

• is associated to that particular machine through its host identifier.
• includes the number of license credits available to that server
• determines what modules and integrations you can enable on the server.

Standalone licensing is therefore usually most suitable:

• for relatively small sites.
• where the number of network objects managed by each Entuity server is known and stable.
• when the Entuity servers are not moved between machines.
• when communication between Entuity servers is not guaranteed, e.g. they are in different subnets and therefore the Central License Server model is not appropriate.

Central License Server licensing

With Central License Server licensing, the central license file contains all of the licensing information. Each remote server has a license that identifies their central server. This model is suitable where you have multiple Entuity servers.

Using a Central License Server allows you to allocate and reallocate licensing credits to remote servers as their requirements change. For example you may have three servers each with local licenses that support the same number of objects. These licenses may not reflect the current loading on those servers:

Example of locally managed licensing:

Example of distributed managed licensing:

When using a Central License Server:

• that is also a polling server, you must explicitly assign license credits to that server.
• all servers require a valid license, but only the licensing server includes credits for managing objects.
• a remote server can only accept license credits from one central licensing server.
• a central licensing server can only support the number of clients specified in its license file.
• the central licensing server regularly contacts its clients to confirm its presence and check license object usage. A remote server has a valid period, by default 7 days, during which it will run without contact from its server.

Note, Entuity recommends that you do not use a Central License Server to manage network objects or as a consolidation server. This is especially true in VMware Vmotion environments where the hosting virtual machine may change:

• for the remote servers, this does not present a licensing problem.
• for the Central License Server, its license is tied to the host identifier. If the machine changes, so does the host identifier and the server will fail.

If the Central License Server fails, its remote servers will continue to work for another seven days, which should be sufficient time to recover or rebuild a server.

Important note when upgrading to Entuity v21.0: Changes to the central license server in Entuity v21.0 introduce incompatibilities between v21.0 and earlier versions of Entuity. When upgrading, the central license server must be upgraded first, followed by clients (remote servers) within 5 days. Where it is not possible to update all remote servers within this period, Entuity recommends that an Entuity v21.0 license server is run in addition to the existing license server, and remote servers be migrated to the new license server as they are upgraded.

Note, a license client (an Entuity server that uses license credits from a central pool) must be a remote server of the central license server, but not all remote servers are necessarily license clients.

Entuity license types:

Full Device (Fully Managed Devices):

This pool of license credits covers fully-managed devices including:

• routers
• switches
• firewalls
• load balancers
• servers
• storage devices
• controllers (e.g. wireless, SD-WAN, hypervisors, etc).
• databases (from Entuity v22.0 P07 upwards)
• any other SNMP-manageable device.

Note, the first onboarded hypervisor on any VM Platform is free (i.e., does not consume any additional license credits), because it is considered to be covered by the VM Platform's full device credit.

Note, Full Device licenses assigned to Controllers do not cover associated assets such as access points, SD-WAN devices and virtual machines.

Basic Device (Basic Managed Devices):

This pool of license credits covers ping-only and basic managed devices for which Entuity conducts limited polling of device-level attributes and IP monitoring, and (from Entuity v22.0 upwards) web applications. There are two types of management for basic devices:

• Ping Only - checks for status via ICMP.
• SNMP - polls the following metrics (but does not include any port data):
  • ICMP reachability % (including Down%, Unitialized% and OK%).
  • Name (including Display Name).
  • Polled IP address.
  • MAC address.
  • Location.
  • SNMP type.
  • SysOID.

Basic Device license credits also cover associated devices, i.e. the access points, SD-WAN devices and virtual machines that are associated with their respective controllers. Entuity supports the following platforms and controllers:

• Cisco Meraki (including routers, switches, APs etc).
• Cisco Viptela (including devices from the vManage platform).
• VMWare ESXi (VMs).
• Microsoft HyperV (VMs).
• Oracle VM Manager (VMs).
• Amazon Web Services (VMs).
• Microsoft Azure (VMs).
• Aruba Wireless Controllers (APs).
• Cisco Wireless Controllers (APs).

Objects (Objects):

Object credits are automatically included, relative to the number of device credits purchased. This pool helps ensure that overall Entuity server polling remains within sensible limits for the server. In the exceptional circumstance that you exceed the object limit, please contact Entuity Support. All managed objects consume object credits, e.g. ports.

From Entuity v21.0 upwards, object license credits are also consumed by User Defined Polling objects and User Defined Data Receiver objects:

• If a User Defined poller (REST or SNMP) or data receiver is added to a custom device, which does not consume any device credits, then one Objects license credit is consumed per each User Defined poller applied to the device.
• Each sub component (sub object) created by a User Defined poller (REST or SNMP) or data receiver, consumes one Objects license credit, regardless of the type of parent object to which they are attached (and regardless of whether the parent object consumes a license credit).

Note, Associated Items license credits have been removed from the Entuity license model in Entuity v21.0.

Configuration Management (Configuration Management Devices):

This pool of license credits covers both Configuration Management and Configuration Monitoring.

SurePath (Paths):

This pool of license credits covers the number of paths you can create in Entuity's SurePath functionality. SurePath is licensed per path and is offered in bundles of 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1000 paths.

From Entuity v23.0 upwards,

• If SurePath credits are not available, existing paths will use (or "borrow") a Full Device credit.
• If more SurePath credits become available at a later date (e.g. by installing a new license, or by deleting/unmanaging other SurePath paths to free up credits), any paths currently "borrowing" Full Device credits will be converted to use SurePath credits, and their Full Device credits will be freed up.
• Any new SurePath paths added after upgrade can still use available Full Device credits, if no SurePath credits are available.

IFAP (IFA Premium):

A single activation license to enable dedicated flow collection and analysis through Integrated Flow Analyzer Premium.

Notes for license allocation per device:

• License credits will be attributed to the device by its managed name or IP.
• If a device is being managed by two different names/IPs, then it will be added as two nodes and use two license credits. E.g. A managed host for the in-band IP and a server for the out-of-band IP would use two credits. However, if both HW and OS are being managed through the same in-band IP, then only one credit will be used.
• You can pick and choose which objects that you want to manage under license. For example, if you have 100 VM platforms, but you only want to enable 10 of them, then you can do so.

Note for custom devices:

Custom devices do not consume license credits.

Assigning license credits:

When you install a server with a standalone license, the license credits are already assigned to the server and cannot be amended. If you wish amend the license credits and allocation, you will need to purchase and install a new license.

However, when you start the license server or remote server with a Central License Server, the license credits are not assigned. Using a central licensing server means you can allocate and reallocate licensing credits to remote servers as you want.

To assign license credits:

1. In the Main Menu, click Administration.
2. Click Multi-Server Configuration. This will open the Multi-Server Configuration page.
3. Select the server to which you want to assign credits and click Licenses.
4. This will open the Change [server name] license allocation window.
5. Depending on the license model, enter the number of device and object license credits to assign to the server.
6. Click OK to save, otherwise click Cancel.
7. Note, a remote server that did not previously have a credit allocation will restart in a licensed mode. The Central License Server may temporarily report the remote server state as Down.

To deallocate license credits to a remote server:

1. On the Multi-Server Configuration page, select the remote server from which you want to deallocate credits.
2. Click Edit and set the number of device and object license credits to assign to the server to zero.
3. Click OK to save, otherwise click Cancel.

If a remote server is unavailable, you cannot deallocate its license credits until it is available again.

If a server is permanently unavailable, e.g. when the remote server is restored from a backup to a new install, you must wait for one week until the license credit allocation becomes stale. Therefore, when possible you should deallocate license credits before move a server.

Checking the Entuity license:

There are three ways in which you can check the status of your Entuity license:

• Through the License Health page, which provides a breakdown of the license components. This page can be found by clicking System Information in the Main Menu, and then clicking on status symbol in the License column.
• Via the Discovered Assets or Auto Discovery tabs from the Asset Management page.
• By running checkLicense from the command line, which provides a detailed breakdown of the license components.

To run a detailed check on the Entuity license:

Run checkLicense from the command line to check the contents of the license file (by default license.dat), and view a breakdown of the licensable objects and their weighting.

1. Log into the command line on the Entuity server.
2. From the Entuity server bin directory, run checkLicense against license.dat: 
   checkLicense -f pathname_of_license.dat
3. For each policy group, checkLicense displays the objects and their license credit weighting. When an object has a license credit weight of:
   • 0 - it is licensed but not charged, i.e. a free object.
   • 1 (or more) - for each managed object, 1 (or more) credits are subtracted from the license credits available to the associated policy group.

To identify when a license expires:

Entuity will monitor the state of the current license. It will check for license expiry on its licensable components or shortage of available license credits. By default, for the 30 days before a license expires:

• Entuity will display a countdown to the expiry in the UI.
• Entuity raises Entuity Server License Alert events when one or more of its licensable components is approaching an expiry date. Entuity will also raise this event when one or more of its licensable components has reached its limit of managed objects. The event description details the licensable component(s) and the number of free credits. This is a system-wide event that appears in all Views.

To upgrade the Entuity license:

The Entuity license requires updating when:

• installing a new release of Entuity.
• moving Entuity to a new management server.
• changing the license credit allocation above the current maximum limit (otherwise, this allocation can be updated without updating the license).
• adding additional functionality through an upgrade or new modules.
• the current license is about to expire.

Please see this article for help and information on how to upgrade your Entuity license.

RESTful API:

Please see this article for help and information on listing used and available license metrics via Entuity RESTful API.