Managing License
Hey, at first our specs: - 2x Citrix Xen Server Hosts in a Pool, Ver 6.5 - Acronis Build 11.5.43994 - 2x Acronis Backup Advanced Multihypervisor 11.5 Universal Licenses - 1x Acronis Backup 11.5 Add On for Exchange - a lot VMs, including the Exchange-Server Since 4 weeks we encounter licensing problems, that only appear on 2 or 4 of 14 vm's. Backup tasks want to start and fail with the notice, that the license is deactivated. But other machines backup with the same. we already changed the licenses, dropped them and reinstalled them, and also reinstalled the packages. on the management machine holding the license server and also the packages on the machines furthermore we encounter a problem changing / readopting licenses on the exchange server. in case we point the universal license on the exchange server, the license information for the information-store get lost. acronis call it the "exchange add-on license". when we want to reallocate the exchange add-on license, the assistant tells us, that there is no license available for the system backup - so the universal license the system itself is lost. Any suggestions, what we can do? Greetings Robert
Hey @all, hello Ekaterina,
thank you in advance for your reply.
After some investigation, we still have some trouble with the licensing of our product for the vm themselves. As your suggestion we, revoked the exchange add-on license.
I think the most trouble occured after updating Xen Server from 6.2 to 6.5. As i mentioned we have 14 VMs running different versions of Windows OS, since Win 7x64m and Win Server 2008 up to Win Server 2012 R2.
Before the Xen Server Update i recognized that in the license modul of acronis, 2 Universal Licenses are available for the hosts. But no VM and no XenServer ever marked at least one license as their own. So in past every time i had a look at the license view, 2 Universal Licenses are available and all VMs made their backups.
Now, the backup tasks of four of our vms fail with the notice, that the licences check fails and the license is deactivated. Furthermore 2 of theese vms now took the 2 available universal licences and for now their backup task are finishing successfully.
The remaining two backup tasks of the remaing two faulty vms still fail with the notice i mentioned above.
Meanwhile all other vms runn and finish their backup tasks successfully.
Any suggestions?
Thank you
kind regards, robert
Hi Robert, agent-based backup of virtual machines works without license assignment to the VM. So that's why you saw 2 universal licenses unassigned in the Licensing view.
Looks like after upgrade of Xen Server, our software recognized some VMs as a physical machines and perfrom license acquiring. When Universal license is acquired to physical machine it allows abackup of this machine + up to 4 VMs. So in you case 2 machines have acquired licenses in a physical manner + allows backup of 8 VMs (totally - 10 machines), another 4 machines get licensing issue.
I can suggest you to revoke licenses from machines that acqure it, restart license server and MMS service on the machines. If everything will fine, licenses should remain unassigned and backup of all VMs should work fine.
If the issue will remain, please inform us about it, we will fix it by adding detection of new version of Xen hypervisor in the nearest update.
Dear Andrew,
thank you for your reply.
How you can see my last post is bit far away, because we spend a lot of time of troubleshooting our systems, get Acronis Backups running.
We noticed that our XenServer did not have the last fixes and updates, furthermore our VMs had not installed the latest Xen Server Tools. In charge of that and making some clean surrendings we updated all our systems and installed the latest release of Acronis and Acronis Agents.
After that, as you said, we revoked the licenses from the machines, restarted the license server and MMS Service on the VMs.
Unlikely the problem still remains.
Your idea, that after upgrading the Xen Server, Acronis determines all VMs as physical seems to be the suitable answer.
So we would be very pleased if you fix it by adding detection of the Xen hypervisor version in your nearest update.
Kind Regards, Robert
Hi Robert, thans for pointing the problem.
Could you clarify the version, build# for that Xen server you were upgraded to? We will try to reproduce it in our side to fix the issue.
Dear Andrew,
thank you for your reply.
Our running environment:
Acronis 11.5.43994
Xen Server 6.5 SP1 , with the following Hotfixes/Updates:
XS65E001
XS65E002
XS65E003
XS65E005
XS65E006
XS65E007
XS65E008
XS65E009
XS65E010
XS65ESP1
XS65ESP1002
XS65ESP1003
XS65ESP1004
Hey Andrew,
some time went, therefore i would like to ask whats the status of your tests and when can we assume a fix?
kind regards
Robert
Hi Robert,
my quick assuption about a bug in recognition of the hypervizor type was not confirmed. I submited a task for our QA to investigate it deeply. But due to overload of our QA team, it will be checked not earlier that after 1-2 weeks.
Even if the bug will be found, the fix in licensing is potentially risky and requires extra testing. So I'm afraid that the fix will not be be available in this year.
thank you for your quick reply, we're looking forward hearing from you
Hello
Apologies if this has been answered somewhere already, I couldn't find it...
I am setting up Acronis Backup Advanced Universal Licence v11.5 on a network where all of the machines are running Windows OS, either Win Server 2008 R2 or Win 7.
In all of the literature it states that with a fully licenced version I should have the functionality to backup one (1) system, and I need to purchase individual licences for each additional physical system I intend to back up? Is this correct? Because when I install the console it will not allow me to install any agents to back up any machines, including the one I'm doing the initial install on, without requesting additional licences.
I have only been supplied with one icence number, Which was the same as the one included in the link I used to download the installer
Thanks for your help
Mark
Hi Mark, not sure that I get your question. You have one license that allows you backup of one machine. What's the problem? To backup multiple machines, you have to purhcase licenses for each of them and install agents on it.
Sorry. To be more specific I can't back up any machines, not even one.
So I've installed the software as outlined in the user guide:
Step one completed correctly so I have a machine with the Acronis backup management console installed, however the “Manage this Machine” option is greyed out.
On to Step two I would like to be able to back up the same machine, bearing in mind I haven’t installed agents on any other machines. When I attempt to install an agent on the same machine it requests a licence key. I entered the same licence key I was given with the product in the format:
XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX
I get a message saying that 0 licences have been added. I can’t proceed with installation of the agent without entering a licence.
As far as I am aware I should have the capability to at least back up one machine with a valid install?
This is the first time I've installed this version so I could be making a basic error
Thanks for your help.
Make sure that you launch the proper setup program for exactly purchased product. You can find the correct download link in the email that you received after purchasing. Otherwice contact support for further investigation.
The link provided included the serial number so it should be the right one.
The service account is registered to the end user, I'm just installing it for them, so I don't have access to their account and it seems to be almost impossible to contact support directly unless you are the individual that registered the serial number.
Ok, send me the download link and the license key in the Private message, I'll check.
Hey Andre,
something new to our described problem above ( our posts up to 2015-12-16)?
I'm pleased hearing from you
Robert
Hi Robert, unfortunately we did not managed to reproduce your issue in our QA lab, so the case was moved from the roadmap to the next update.
Also you can contact Acronis support to perform deeper problem investigation.
Update: Looks like the issue appears in some Xen configurations:
http://investors.citrix.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=649330
http://www.riverlite.co.uk/blog/windows-8-on-xenserver-5-6-sp2/
“With viridian=true Xen exposes a set of CPUID leaves that newer versions of Windows recognize as describing the ‘Viridian Enlightenments’. One of these enlightenments is known as ‘APIC assist’. Xen does not currently support APIC assist but Windows just assumes that it does and writes a particular MSR (Model Specific Register) to set it up. Xen copes with this spurious write and this was enough to keep Windows 7 happy. Windows 8 however also tries to read the MSR and this is what’s causing the exception early in boot.
Setting viridian=false stops the CPUID leaves from being exposed and works around this problem, but it’s a bit of a sledgehammer. It also means your OS will not optimize spinlocks, TPR reads/writes and other things appropriately for running in a virtual environment so don’t treat it as a panacea. Since Microsoft are highly unlikely to fix the Windows kernel, Xen must be modified to accommodate Windows 8′s behaviour. This work is already in progress.”
https://github.com/xenserver/xen-4.6/blob/828ac175e5f8f616b14e49f5353bc…