Enterprise licensing support in virtual environments

Virtual environments: License Servers are supported in virtual environments. However, under certain circumstances, such as transferring a license from one virtual environment to another, the License Server may interpret the transfer as an improper move and therefore go into grace period.

• High Availability (HA) in VMWare and Hyper-V virtual environments does not activate licensing grace period during a failover as monitored environmental variables do not change.

• Disaster Recovery (DR) in VMWare and Hyper-V virtual environments activates a licensing grace period as monitored environmental variables do change.

High Availability: License Servers in a High Availability virtual environment are supported in specific topologies. Basic redundancy topologies are described in the AVEVA Enterprise Licensing online help.

Disaster Recovery: License Servers in a Disaster Recovery virtual environment will go into a grace period during DR activities. This is because DR activities are similar to an improper move of licenses and will trigger a grace period.

To avoid a grace period trigger in a DR virtual environment, we recommend that you run the License Server outside the virtualized DR environment and use a redundant License Server configuration through the functionality built into the License Server software. Another option is to purchase Disaster Recovery licenses at a discounted rate and establish a backup License Server with these additional licenses.

In all environments, we recommend you install and run the AVEVA System Monitor to monitor licensing functionality and view alerts on issues such as a License Server going into grace period or licenses expiring.