Licensing

Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM) requires a verified Citrix ADM license to manage and monitor the Citrix Citrix ADC instances.  

You can manage and monitor any number of instances and entities without a license. However, you can only manage 30 discovered applications on the App Dashboard and view analytics data for only 30 virtual servers without applying a license. To manage more than 30 discovered applications or to view analytics for more than 30 virtual servers, you must purchase and apply licenses.

*For Citrix Director integration with Citrix ADM support – Citrix Director should have platinum license.

Licenses for additional virtual servers are available in virtual server packs of 100. You can obtain a valid license and add the licenses on the Citrix ADM servers through the Citrix ADM GUI.

High Availability

Licenses are locked to the instances, which means that you have to use a specific appliance’s IP address (active node’s) for license-related operations on a high availability pair. When licensing, apply licenses on active node, that will be in charge of licensing, and apply all future licenses on that instance. Note that you can delete licenses only from the node on which you have installed the licenses.

When fail-over occurs, the new active node will maintain the licensing for a grace period of 30 days.

Note

• If you have installed Citrix ADM 12.1.49.x or earlier releases, you will get a grace period of 30 days to maintain the licensing on the secondary node. After the grace period, you need to contact Citrix to rehost the original license.

• For 12.1.50.x or later releases, the Citrix ADM license is automatically synchronized to the secondary node.

• Pooled licenses are automatically synchronized to the secondary node from 12.1.50.x or later release.

Orchestration

The Orchestration module is independent of licensing and is always available.

Upgrading the Virtual Server Licenses

You can upgrade the licensing on Citrix ADM to monitor and manage more virtual servers hosted on the Citrix ADC appliances.

To upgrade your appliance licenses:

1. In a web browser, type the IP address of Citrix ADM (for example, http://192.168.100.1).

2. In User Name and Password, enter the administrator credentials.

3. Navigate to Networks > Licenses > Settings.

4. In the details pane, go to License Files, and select one of the following options:

   • Upload license files from a local computer. If a license is already present on your local computer, click Browse and select the license file (.lic) that you want to use to allocate your licenses. Click Finish.

   • Use License Activation Code. Citrix emails the LAC for the license that you purchased. Enter the LAC in the text box and then click Get Licenses.

   Note

   If you select this option, the Citrix ADM must be connected to the Internet, or a proxy server must be available.

   

5. You can add more licenses from the License Settings page at any time.

   

Verification

You can verify the licenses installed on your Citrix ADM by navigating to Networks > Licenses > System Licenses.

Licensing the Virtual Servers

You can select the virtual servers to manage and monitor through MAS. If the total number of virtual servers hosted by the discovered Citrix ADC instances is lower than the number of installed virtual server licenses, Citrix ADM licenses all the virtual servers.

You can select the virtual servers you want to manage and monitor through Citrix ADM.

Points to Note:

• By default, Citrix ADM automatically licenses the virtual servers randomly after each virtual server poll cycle.
• If the total number of virtual servers discovered in your Citrix ADM is lower than the number of installed virtual server licenses, Citrix ADM, by default, licenses all the virtual servers.
• To select the virtual servers manually, or to restrict licensing to limited virtual servers, you have to first disable auto licensing the virtual servers, and then select the virtual servers you want to manage.
• Citrix ADM do not license the non-addressable virtual servers. To manage them, you need to manually license them.

To Manage the licensed virtual servers:

1. Log on to Citrix ADM using a supported web browser.

2. Navigate to Networks > Licenses > System Licenses.

   The dashboard displays the virtual server licenses available, the managed virtual servers along with the virtual server type.

3. In the License Settings section, disable Auto-select Virtual servers.

   

4. Click Select Virtual Servers.

5. In the Choose Virtual Servers screen, select the type of virtual servers by clicking the relevant tab.

   

6. Select the virtual servers to be licensed from the available list.

7. Click Next to move to the other virtual servers’ tab, or click Save and Exit to license the selected virtual servers.

Configuring auto license support for non-addressable virtual servers

Citrix ADM, by default, does not automatically apply licenses to non-addressable virtual servers. For licensing non-addressable virtual servers, you must disable the auto-license option and manually select the non-addressable virtual servers. This increases your effort to manually select the non-addressable servers initially when you apply the licenses. You also need to manually select the new non-addressable virtual servers whenever they are added to your network.

Citrix ADM provides a new option under Networks > Licenses > System Licenses. That is, the new option Auto-select nonaddressable Virtual Servers. Enabling this option now allows you to explicitly specify that the licensing should include non-addressable virtual servers also.

Note:

• Citrix ADM, by default, still does not auto select non-addressable virtual servers for licensing.

• Application analytics (App Dashboard) is the only analytics supported currently on licensed non-addressable virtual servers.

Expiry Checks for Virtual Server Licenses

You can now view the status of and set alerts for virtual server license expiry in Citrix ADM.

To view the status of the licenses:

1. Navigate to Networks > Licenses > System Licenses.

2. In the License Expiry Information section, you can find the details of the licenses that are going to expire:

   

   • Feature: Type of license that is going to expire.
   • Count: Number of virtual servers or instances that will be affected.
   • Days to expiry: Number of days remaining before expiry.

To configure the notification settings of licenses:

1. Navigate to Networks> Licenses > Settings.

2. In the Notification Settings section, click the pencil icon and edit the parameters.

   

   • Email profile: Email profile or distribution list for sending notifications when licenses reach threshold, or going to expire.
   • SMS Profile: SMS profile or distribution list for sending notifications when licenses reach threshold, or going to expire.
   • Alert Threshold: Set percentage of pooled licenses to notify administrators by Email or SMS.
   • License Expiry Threshold: Number of days before the number of licenses determined by Alert Threshold expire.
   • Days to expiry: Number of days remaining before expiry.