Archived - Licensing for ENA - ENA v17.0 and ENA v18.0

ENA license files

Standalone and Central License Server Licensing

ENA device and object licensing models

Assigning license credits

Checking the ENA license

To upgrade and update the ENA license

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

• ENA 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.

ENA license files:

ENA 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, ENA 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.

ENA device and object licensing models:

ENA licensing can be device- or object-based. This decision is made upon purchasing ENA.

• Device-based licensing allows you to manage up to a fixed number of devices and an associated number of objects (e.g. ports). This determines what happens when ENA reaches license credit limits:
  
  • license credits are not transferable between devices and objects, i.e. if you have used all of your device credits, you cannot use an object credit to manage a new device.
  • ENA will prevent you managing a device with ports if there are no free object credits, and it will not discover new ports on a device if there are no free object credits.
• Object-based licensing allows you to manage a fixed number of objects. It does not distinguish, for example, between devices and ports.

ENA also licenses individual modules and integrations.

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.

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 ENA license:

There are two ways in which you can check the status of your ENA 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.
• By running checkLicense from the command line, which provides a detailed breakdown of the license components.

To run a detailed check on the ENA 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:

ENA 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:

• ENA will display a countdown to the expiry in the UI.
• ENA raises Entuity Server License Alert events when one or more of its licensable components is approaching an expiry date. ENA 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 ENA license:

The ENA license requires updating when:

• installing a new release of ENA.
• moving ENA 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 ENA license.