Network License - Virtual Server moved to different Physical Server (including cloud servers)
Virtual servers provide several advantages for managing data:
- company personnel set up their software to work with the virtual server
- the virtual servers can be moved to different physical servers to manage storage
- the company personnel are not disrupted by these server moves, the reference to the virtual server has not changed
- the servers can be in a server room at the company, or the complete management of the physical servers can be outsourced to a cloud service
- a USB license would need to be moved from one physical server to the other, which negates the flexibility of moving the virtual server to another physical server
- a soft license option is available, but the soft license is bound to unique identifiers from both the software and the hardware on the server, so the license will deactivate when the virtual server is moved
- this is not a design flaw, it is intentional behavior of the licensing software that prevents a copy of the virtual server from creating a second license
- inconvenience to software users
- time spent for IT to replace the license
- any computer in the server room could be the network license server
- the licensing software does not require much disk space, and the disk space is static, the storage does not need to be managed along with other company data
- a software user's computer could be used as the license server
- dongle servers - item of hardware specifically designed to connect USB dongles to a network