Frequently Asked Questions
Can I set up a Disaster Recovery site and transfer current licenses on the DC Cluster site to a license server?
There is an Active/Passive cluster setup in the primary DC having perpetual ICS licenses hosted on ISA6000 hardware appliances. They are now setting up a Disaster Recovery (DR) site where they will be setting up another appliance and want the flexibility to re-allocate licenses when required using a license server. They also wish to transfer the current licenses on the DC cluster to a license server and purchase additional licenses. Is this possible?
A. With MBR license, hardware appliances with perpetual or subscription licenses could ‘share’ these ‘up’ to the license server which could then distribute them as normal – either back to the same appliance or share them to others; a DR appliance for example.
Can we surrender the current perpetual licenses on the hardware cluster and transfer them to a new license server?
A. Assuming the MBR exists for ISA platform, then yes; the licenses stay installed on the hardware cluster, but each day (configurable interval) the hardware appliance lend their licenses to the license-server, for it to lease out as normal, as if they were installed on the license server.
The hardware appliance can ‘pull them back’ if needed, and if the license-server goes offline the licenses will still be on the hardware cluster.
- The licenses surrendered by the license client to the license server is valid for a period of 10 days. - Every lease interval (of 4 hours), the time gets updated to 10 days (from the last successful contact with the license server). - In addition to on-demand recall, - In case, the license server becomes unreachable, the license client automatically takes back the surrendered license, if the license server is not reachable for > 10 days. - Similarly, the license server also removes the surrendered license from its license pool, if the license client did not contact for >10 days. - To forcefully take back the licenses, the admin has to remove the license server config on the license client.
"Exceeded maximum users for this realm. Please contact your system administrator"
Imported config from the current cloud VM on a fresh hardware appliance (in remote DC, no console server yet….). No licenses are installed yet (so limited to 2). On both admin realms, getting the message: "Exceeded maximum users for this realm. Please contact your system administrator".
A. Workaround: The issue is due to limiting the users for a realm (User Realms > Users > Authentication Policy > Limits). So, use “Super Admin” session to install required licenses (EVAL will do).