RE: RE: Software Licensing for HA systems

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   9. RE: Software Licensing for HA systems (Chris Bipes)
>
>Caution,  If you can remove them, someone can re-install and get another
>grace period without a full scratch. 


For licensing generated via IBM licensing APIs, the RMVLICKEY command will 
remove license keys. This has no effect on whether or not a grace period has 
started. The grace period starts when the program product first requests a 
license usage and the state of license key indicates that the period ought to 
start. (If a valid license is already entered when the first license request is 
made, the grace period isn't triggered.)

For example, the licensed product is created as a keyed product with a 10 day 
grace period. The product is installed and used today, and the use involves a 
product program that calls the RequestLicense API. If no license key has been 
entered yet, then the grace period starts today.

Now, tomorrow, a valid license key is entered. Subsequent uses of the product 
(where the product calls the RequestLicense API) result in successful license 
usages. There is no problem with grace period yet.

But then, two weeks from today, RMVLICKEY is used to remove the license key 
from the license repository. As soon as any part of that product calls 
RequestLicense, the request will fail because (1) there is no valid license key 
in the repository and (2) the grace period has expired because it was first 
signalled today and only lasts for 10 days, not two weeks.

Removal of the product via DLTLICPGM and reinstalling the product will not give 
a new grace period. The license repository retains info about product/license 
usage separate from the license key itself.

That's one general scenario. There are multiple options of how to combine 
expiration date, version/release/mod level, grace period, concurrent users, 
etc. Determining what licensing options to use when creating a licensed product 
is no trivial task.

OTOH, once the product definition is set, issuing a license key is trivial. 
It's the control of the issuing that causes the problem.

Tom Liotta

>-----Original Message-----
>
>If software vendors would use the OS/400 license management APIs, and
>give a
>grace period to their product definitions, the product will be able to
>handle a typical DR failover with no licensing issues.... 
>
>Overall, I'm pretty happy with them. I wish there was a way to remove a
>license key, so that software transfers weren't such a PITA -- ARE YOU
>LISTENING IBM?