Virtualization and licensing
 
Virtualization technologies have numerous advantages. Thanks to virtualization, server performance has increased, multiple OS environments can co-exist on the same physical machine, and platforms can easily be cloned or restored to a previously backed up state.
 
But what about licensed software? Because operating systems running in virtual environments are designed to be hardware independent, hardware identifiers such as IP or MAC addresses, host IDs, or hardware serial IDs are no longer obstacles to VM cloning. Duplicating the virtual machines and modifying the host IDs is simple and takes minutes to perform.
 
Knowing the benefits and the risks, should you allow or prohibit applications to be duplicated and installed on VMs? You might trust some customers to run your software in a virtual environment, but not necessarily want to allow this for all customers. X-Formation’s LM-X License Manager gives you the choice.
 
LM-X detects and handles most virtualization technologies, including VMWare, Microsoft Virtual Server, and VirtualBox. To prevent potential license overuse, LM-X denies all checkouts for local licenses in virtual environments and refuses to load licenses on license servers by default.
 
 
If you do choose to allow your license to run on a VM, LM-X gives you safe alternatives to help protect your software from the overuse that could occur in such environments:
 
  • Floating licenses can safely run on VMs by installing the license server on a physical machine, because the license server guards against overuse.
  • If you want to allow the license server to run on a virtual machine, you can lock the license server to a dongle, a physical device that limits the application to run only on the machine on which it’s installed. With dongles, copying of virtual machines becomes irrelevant, because you won't be able to start more than one instance of the software.
  • For either floating or node-locked licenses, you can lock the license to a BIOS host ID. A BIOS host ID contains a unique virtual machine ID (UUID), and VMs are typically managed by software such as VMware vCenter that prevents unique virtual machine ID cloning.
 
Thanks to advanced LM-X features, you can also choose whether trial licenses can run on VMs or terminal servers. Again, LM-X protects your software by prohibiting trials from running in these virtual environments by default.
 
LM-X License Manager gives you the tools you need to handle virtual environments the way you want to, on a per-customer basis. In today’s world, this flexibility can help you to best protect your intellectual property while continuing to meet the needs and expectations of your customers.
 
For more information write to marketing@edstechnologies.com