Altiris Licensing - Technical FAQ

Products

• IT Management Suite
• Client Management Suite
• Server Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

This KB contains information about ITMS/Altiris Licensing. 

How does Altiris licensing work for Notification Server / Symantec Management Platform-based products?

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Resolution

This article discusses licensing for each of the Altiris Notification Server-based solutions:

• How is a license consumed
• What happens when the license count is exceeded
• What happens when a time-limited (demo/install/Subscription) license expires
• What happens when the Maintenance (old AUP) expires
• How to recover a solution license (retirement vs. deletion)
• Anomalies in expected functionality

NOTE: When looking at the License Status, if it shows N/A, this is a Perpetual License that never expires.  Licenses that do not expire can continue to be used after Maintenance expires.

 

General License Rules for all Solutions

Perpetual licenses do not expire and show N/A as the Expiration date.  Perpetual licenses allow the Solution to continue to be used normally in most cases after Maintenance Expires, as the Solution License is still valid (Patch Management is one exception).  When a Subscription or temp License Expires that solution is basically disabled and no longer functions.

Note about perpetual licenses:
The vast majority of our customers were converted from perpetual licenses to subscription licenses.You can check what license type you have, most likely a Subscription model at this point (just check the actual license file. 



We don't make sales of new or additional perpetual licenses at this point.
 

License Information per Solution

Inventory Solution 8.x

• License consumption - While there are multiple factors including the status of the Computer Resource in the database, a license is not consumed from the existence of the inventory solution agent on a managed computer. A license is not consumed by the "basic inventory" function of the Altiris Agent. Instead, it is the inclusion of Inventory data that determines if a computer consumes a license. This is different than many of the other Solutions. 
• License count exceeded - Inventory from licensed nodes will continue to be processed. Incoming inventory data from unlicensed nodes are discarded.
• License expiration (only applicable to Trial or Subscription licenses) - Agent rollouts will still occur without a problem. All new incoming inventory data is discarded.
• Maintenance Expires - Inventory will continue to function normally as long as the License is not Expired.
• License recovery - Up to ITMS 8.6 release it might be required to release the license by Setting a computer record to a non-active status and running the Inventory Clean Up task (Manage > Jobs/Tasks > System Jobs and Tasks > Service and Asset Management > CMDB > Inventory Clean Up) will reclaim the license when a license refresh runs.
• Starting from 8.6 and 8.6 RU1 license recovery has been further improved - see documentation. From the 8.7 release the function for "Inventory Clean Up" task has been removed.

Software Management Solution 8.x

• License consumption - A license is consumed when the Software Management Solution Agent has been installed and subsequently Basic Inventory ran to send the instance of the plug-in to the NS. When the License refresh runs the license will be consumed.
• License count exceeded - All agents that attempt to obtain Software Delivery Tasks beyond the allowed node count will stop receiving the task details in their client policy files. License errors will appear in the Server a.log files.
• Expired License - (only applicable to Trial or Subscription licenses) - Agent rollouts will still occur without a problem. Software Delivery jobs will no longer be advertised to clients, including newer schedules for existing tasks.
• Maintenance Expires - Software Management will continue to function normally as long as the License is not Expired.
• License recovery - License recovery is dependent on deleting the computer record. For Software Management Solution starting from version 7.5, a license is also released after setting the computer status to any value other than Active.

Deployment Solution 8.x

• License consumption - A license is consumed when the plugin is installed and the computer checks in with the console.
• License count exceeded - DS tasks will fail on systems that are beyond the license count.  SMP tracks who is valid and who is not on a first-come-first-serve basis.
• License expiration - DS tasks will no longer run on any systems.
• Maintenance Expires - DS will continue to function normally as long as the License is not Expired.
• License reclamation - Deleting a computer will reclaim the license. 

 

Patch Management 8.x: Please see KB Article - 180699

 

Asset Management 8.x: Please see KB Article - 181691