Re: Licensing Process

Hm, but why should an activated license server issue a temporary license to
a client that already has some sort of license? This is a challenging
question.

OK, let's go through the complete licensing process. If a client connects to
a terminal server, the server checks for the client's license. If the client
does not have a valid license, the terminal server connects to the license
server to request a valid license. The license server sends the terminal
server a temporary license (valid for 90 days, you are absolutely right).
The terminal server forwards this license to the client, granting it a
temporary 90-day license. At this point, the user is not logged in yet. If
the user authenticates successfully, the terminal server contacts the
license server again and informs it about this fact. Now, the temporary
license will be marked as "valid". In my last posting, I used the notion
"one-time licenses" for temporary licenses marked as "valid" , which may
have caused confusion. But only temporary licenses that are not marked a
"valid" behave like standard 90-day temporary licenses.

Now we come to the most important point: If the client with a temporary
license marked as "valid" connects to the terminal server the next time, its
temporary license is instantly upgraded to a full license (if the license
server has full licenses in the license pool). As a consequence, the
temporary license marked as "valid" behaves a little bit different to a
standard temporary license (well, like a one-time license in most cases). If
this would not be the case, a client without a license initially connecting
to a terminal server hooked up to an activated license server would always
use a temporary license for 90 days. But this is not the case, full licenses
are consumed much faster. It only takes up to 90 days until temporary
licenses issued by a not activated license server are updated to full
licenses.

The full license is valid for a random period between 52 and 89 days. Its
validity is again verified by the terminal server upon each connection. If
the license is due to expire within the following 7 days, it is renewed by a
new full license for another period ranging from 52 to 89 days. This does
not consume a new license from the license pool on the license server. And
it is completely independent of the mechanisms behind temporary licenses. It
is more like a "full license refresh". If you discard the client, its
license will be available again on the license server after the license
expired (because the license server "knows" the expire date).

OK, in my last posting I didn't describe this in such detail. But, I still
want to point out that there is no 52 to 89 days grace period for termporary
licenses ;-) Temporary licenses are always valid for 90 days, as Vera said.
But temporary licenses marked as "valid" behave differently to "normal"
temporary licenses. Without this mechanism no client would ever receive a
full license when it connects the second time to a terminal server even if
the first connection only was minutes ago. Without temporary licenses marked
as "valid", it would always take 90 days after the first connection between
TS and RDP client to receive a full license on the client side, which is not
the case.

BTW: I also think that Kirsten's solution may create license chaos in her TS
environment.

Benny


"Vera Noest [MVP]" <vera.noest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns9733E8C34632Bveranoesthemutforsse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I don't think that this is true, Benny.
>
>> But there is no 52 and 89 grace period for temporary licenses
>> issued by an activated license server.
>
> A temporary license is always valid for a maximum of 90 days, also
> when issued by an activated LS.
> If it was only valid for the first connection, you would not be
> able to discard a client and replace it by a new one without
> running out of licenses. The temporary license always outlasts the
> maximum lifetime of a permanent license (i.e. 89 days + 1).
>
> But I agree with the rest of your post, that you cannot be sure
> which LS issued a particular license. This setup (each TS is it's
> own LS) would only give predictable results regarding licensing if
> you also have 100+ dedicated administrative clients, one for
> connecting to each TS :-)
>
> What is unfamiliar in this setup, and caused this configuration I
> think, is that normally you would not put the Terminal servers in
> the remote locations. You place the TS in a central location,
> together with the Licensing Server, and have the clients connect
> from their remote location through rdp.
>
> _________________________________________________________
> Vera Noest
> MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
> TS troubleshooting: http://ts.veranoest.net
> ___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
>
> "Bernhard Tritsch [MVP]" <bt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 21 dec 2005
> in microsoft.public.windows.terminal_services:
>
>> This is an interesting configuration: 100+ terminal servers and
>> each of them having its own license server. Why didn't you use
>> one dedicated license server?
>>
>> But anyway, I think that you misunderstood the role of temporary
>> licenses. A terminal server can grant non-licensed clients a
>> connection for 120 days. No temporary licenses are involved in
>> this process. After this time, the terminal server will not
>> allow these clients to connect unless a license server is found
>> to provide a client license. A license server that is not yet
>> activated can issue temporary licenses valid for 90 days. This
>> mechanism does not work in the same way for activated license
>> servers!
>>
>> If you have an activated license server, it will only issue
>> one-time temporary licenses to non-licensed clients. This means,
>> if a non-licensed client connects to the terminal server for the
>> first time, it receives the tempory license as soon as the login
>> screen is displayed. The reason for issuing this one-time
>> temporary license is, that if the user has no permission to log
>> in, the user is rejected but the client does not consume a valid
>> license in this case. But with the next connection of the same
>> client, the temporary license will be replaced by valid license.
>> This "real" license is valid for a random period between 52 and
>> 89 days. Its validity is again verified upon each connection.
>> But there is no 52 and 89 grace period for temporary licenses
>> issued by an activated license server. As far as I understood,
>> the one-time temporary license issued by an activated license
>> server is NOT the same as a temporary license issued by a not
>> activated license server.
>>
>> The only exception would be if a client received a temporary
>> license BEFORE the license server was activated. This temporary
>> license will be valid for 90 days. When during these 90 days the
>> license server was activated, the client will request a real
>> license just before the temporary license expires. There is no
>> need to issue the one-time temporary license to this client
>> before it is granted a real license.
>>
>> But keep in mind: Each terminal server will accept any client
>> connecting to it as long as the client has a valid license. So,
>> if your client X received a license from the license server on
>> terminal server A, terminal server B will accept a connection of
>> client X. Terminal servers can validate a client license without
>> contacting the license server. This is why your terminal servers
>> will accept more than three connections as long as the clients
>> have valid licenses, even if the local instances of the license
>> service initially only contained three licenses. Only if the
>> client has no valid license (because it is expired), the
>> terminal server asks the license server to provide a valid
>> license. If the client requires a new license, you can never be
>> sure that the license server on the terminal server the client
>> happened to connect to still contains a license it can issue. So
>> it is more or less unpredictable when a client connection is
>> denied.
>>
>> This is why I think that configuring each terminal server with
>> its own license server does not make any sense. Keeping track of
>> all the licenses managed by the different license server will be
>> VERY complicated in an environment as you described it. But it
>> was very interesting to think about such a scenario...
>>
>> Now, finally I want to try to answer your last question: Imagine
>> a client received a temporary license from a not activated
>> license server A. This license is valid for 90 days. If you
>> delete this license in the client registry after 89 days and you
>> connect to a "fresh" terminal server B with his own not
>> activated license server, the client should be granted a new
>> temporary license valid for 90 days. But again, managing such
>> "roaming" TS clients (I would call them "temporary license
>> nomads") will be VERY, VERY complicated -- and I doubt that it
>> is legal.
>>
>> I hope that I described things in a proper way. Licensing issues
>> are always painful. Vera, what do you think?
>>
>> Benny
>>
>> Bernhard Tritsch
>> MVP Terminal Server
>>
>> "Kirsten" <Kirsten@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:7361E3D9-C297-48DC-9E0F-05CBD10BAB8C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Could you verify I have a correct understanding of the
>>> licensing process?
>>>
>>> Background: Win2003, each terminal server is configured as its
>>> own license
>>> server. Each server has 3 per device licenses installed. I
>>> have 100+ remote
>>> servers that are in this configuration, they each have 2
>>> clients on the local
>>> LAN and 1 remote client (for IT use).
>>>
>>> To my understanding:
>>> 1. A new client connects to the server and is granted a
>>> temporary license. 2. The next time the client connects it is
>>> allocated a permanent license. 3. If all the permanent licenses
>>> are issued a temporary license will be continued to be used for
>>> up to 90 days and a warning will be displayed to the
>>> user 14 days prior to its expiration.
>>>
>>> Questions:
>>> If I where to have more then 3 clients connected at a time when
>>> will the additional connections be denied?
>>> Is there any limit to the number of temporary licenses that can
>>> be issued? Can new temporary licenses be issued to a client
>>> that previously had one expire?
>>>
>>> Any other information in the regard would be appreciated.
>>> Thanks.


.

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