Reached registration limit

[Lachlan (Lachlan Gemmell)]

@Malcolm

I’ll also add that this is why more and more of our customers are buying Network Licenses so they aren’t dependent on Embarcadero.

I buy this type of license, along with buying 3 year license terms, and I find the biggest issue is when the three years expires you have to “do something” to be able to run the new versions (the old versions keep running just fine).

I say “do something” there because I can’t actually remember what it is!

I last did it three 3 years ago and the only thing I remember about the process was that I couldn’t remember what it was then either.

@malcolm any chance of a quick post here or perhaps even a blog article explaining exactly what you need to do to your ELC server after you pay for the renewal as a network user?

[PJervois (Paul Jervois)]

This is a public thank you to Malcolm and crew for getting my registration limit increased.

Regards

Paul

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

@Mark_Griffiths

Does the license server only run on Windows, or is there an option to run it under Linux?

Windows and Linux

@Mark_Griffiths

I’m assuming that we can run the license server on a virtual machine, so that we’re able to back it up/restore it/move it to a different physical machine without having to involve Embarcadero?

I’ve never tried, but I don’t see why not. The key thing is the name you access ti under. As long as that stays constant, the underlying IP or even machine can change.

@Mark_Griffiths

With the Network Named License, is it possible for a single user to have Delphi/RAD Studio installed on multiple systems as in your example for a regular Named User License, or is that one of the downsides to a Network Named License that you can’t do that?

Nope, same deal. As long as it’s the same person, you’re good.

@Mark_Griffiths

I’m assuming that the License Server needs to be available all the time for Network Concurrent Licenses unless you check out a license for up to 30 days - does that also apply to Network Named Licenses? i.e. does Delphi/Rad Studio only need to contact the server when returning a license for use on a different system or when a license is renewed/upgraded?

With concurrent you need to explicitly check them out if you are going offline. With named, they auto-checkout. If i look in the admin for our license server, I can see each of the guys and how long they have until their IDE pings the license server again. You can do it manually as well of course.

@Mark_Griffiths

Assuming that a Network Named License doesn’t need to regularly check in with the license server to keep working and you need to relinquish the license back to the server before you can issue it to a different system, what do you do if that system becomes lost/destroyed - e.g. the laptop that it was on is stolen? Does that then require action from Embarcadero before being able to reissue the license to a new system?

You can revoke a license from someone anytime you like. I haven’t tested it, but I assume the IDE would keep working until the next time the IDE pings the server (as in the previous answer). YOu don’t need to talk to Embarcadero for any of that.

@Mark_Griffiths

If we move from a Named License to a Network Named License, are we then stuck there, or can we move back to a regular Named User License if we want to?

Support need to do the change, so as long as you have support (ie. your subscription is current) we can change it back and forth everyday (but please don’t)

Cheers
Malcolm

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

@Lachlan

@malcolm any chance of a quick post here or perhaps even a blog article explaining exactly what you need to do to your ELC server after you pay for the renewal as a network user?

Hmmm, this is weird. I don’t do anything to ours when I renew, and we have access to new versions. Let me dig into this with Embarcadero and see if I’m missing something.

Re: blog post, yeah, I have a few License Server posts in the planning, so I’ll add this. Our license server hosting offering has been kinda in beta with a few customers, so as we make it public I want to post a few things.

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

Thanks Paul. I do wish it was something we didn’t have to do, but there you go.

[Mark_Griffiths]

Awesome - thanks for that Malcolm.

I’ll send you an email about switching over.

[Lachlan (Lachlan Gemmell)]

@Malcolm

Hmmm, this is weird. I don’t do anything to ours when I renew, and we have access to new versions. Let me dig into this with Embarcadero and see if I’m missing something.

I’ve got a faint recollection that my ELC server doesn’t have internet access, that sounds like it might be why you don’t have to do anything manually while in the past I have.

I think it was a configuration problem at my end that prevented my ELC server from getting internet access but it was a problem I decided not to fix. If the ELC server can’t dial home to Embarcadero, there’s no possibility of any remote license trickery should the powers that be at Embarcadero go all super evil.

So I think after renewal there’s some file you can manually download from Embarcadero and then somehow manually import it into your ELC. I just can’t remember where you get that download from or how you import it.

[ap2021 (Alexander Pastuhov)]

What happens if you are off maintenance and need to reinstall / move ELC server?

Wouldn’t you face the same renewal dilemma?

Alex

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

Ah, ok. Let me see what I can find out.

[Lachlan (Lachlan Gemmell)]

@ap2021

What happens if you are off maintenance and need to reinstall / move ELC server?

To be honest I don’t know and the plan is never to have to find out.

I have the ELC installed in a Linux VM that I snapshotted right after installation and then snapshot again after doing the mystery manual renewal process. Hopefully that means I never have to do an ELC reinstall and moving it will be as easy as moving any VM.

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

If you keep the hostname the same, then no issue. If that changes, then yes, you’ll need to go back to Embarcadero.

When you add a license to it to host, it grabs the hostname. It then uses that as a reference in future.

Since 2016 we’ve had out internal server running across about 3 different AWS instances, and now onto Azure instead. The whole time we’ve kept the name the same so haven’t had to talk to Embarcadero about it.

[ap2021 (Alexander Pastuhov)]

All VM software eventually develops problems with very old Linux installations. New hardware would contribute to that as well. And updating Linux will at some point kill the ELC server. So there is bound to be an end of shelf life for this scenario too. I.e.: 10 year – probably, but 20 years – unlikely and 30 years – certainly not.

This whole licensing approach is very bad, any way you approach it…

Alex

[Mark_Griffiths]

Thanks to Malcolm and his team, I’m now switched over to a Network Named License - thanks!

A few more things for anyone else considering making the switch:

From sending an email to Malcolm to receiving the new details was about 40 hours. Obviously switching every day would be a bit optimistic (and a bit over the top of course), but it didn’t take that long in the grand scheme of things and I was in no great rush.

Setting up the Linux VM was of course quite easy and then installing the ELC server wasn’t that much more effort on top.

IIRC, part of the instructions tell you to uninstall your existing copy of Delphi/RAD Studio, but I didn’t need to do that - I just downloaded a small program from the ELC server to load the settings into my existing copy of Delphi. To comply with the changeover agreement, I had to manually go into the license manager under the Help menu of Delphi and delete the original Named User license - I suspect that, based on previous experience, it would automatically phone home and deactivate itself at some point if I hadn’t done that anyway. Until I deleted the old license details, it didn’t try to contact the ELC server at all.

When setting up the named user on the ELC, you need to specify the Windows username as the username - I didn’t see anywhere that said that in the documentation, but I might have missed it.

When logging into the ELC web server as a user to get the license file, it only needs your username - there’s no way that I could see to set a password for the user which is a bit surprising - anyone that can reach the right port on your ELC server would then be able to check out your license if they know your username.

When setting up a named user in ELC, you can set a maximum lifetime that that user automatically checks the license out for - up to a maximum of 30 days. Something I’ll need to keep in mind is that if I haven’t used Delphi on my laptop for a while, I would need to fire it up to grab a 30 day period from the server before I went out with it if I want to be able to use it. I guess that if I was going away for a longer period, I could just take a copy of the ELC VM with me.

If the ELC server isn’t running/contactable when starting Delphi, there’s a 20 second delay before anything at all shows on the screen - it then loads as normal, but says that it has 30 days remaining on the license. I was hoping to only need to fire up the ELC VM once every 30 days, but it’ll probably be easier to just leave it running all the time.

Overall, I’d say that it’s well worth doing. It’s a slight hassle to set up and to keep running, but could potentially save huge hassles down the road if Embarcadero ever implodes or I want to let my subscription lapse and then move my installation to a different physical machine. Even with an active subscription, I’ve heard a number of stories of people having to wait a while for support to give them a license bump. Having said all that, my Delphi install prior to my current one was migrated across at least 3 different laptops without ever needing to reactivate it even though Windows itself required reactivation each time.

[Malcolm (Malcolm Groves)]

Glad to hear it went fairly smoothly, Mark.

On the password issue, I agree it is a little odd, but the admin has to approve license requests (or add the person beforehand) so possibly not as bad as it sounds.

I think the software was definitely written thinking it would a) be on an internal network and b) that people were trustworthy. Ah, the good old days

[Lachlan (Lachlan Gemmell)]

@Malcolm

I think the software was definitely written thinking it would a) be on an internal network

@Malcolm any word yet on what the process is for renewals for ELC servers that don’t have internet access?