XenCenter

Managing XenServer Licenses

Note:

XenCenter YYYY.x.x is currently in preview and is not supported for production use. Note that any future references to production support apply only when XenCenter YYYY.x.x and XenServer 8 go from preview status to general availability.

You can use XenCenter YYYY.x.x to manage your XenServer 8 and Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1 non-production environments. However, to manage your Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1 production environment, use XenCenter 8.2.7. For more information, see the XenCenter 8.2.7 documentation.

You can install XenCenter 8.2.7 and XenCenter YYYY.x.x on the same system. Installing XenCenter YYYY.x.x does not overwrite your XenCenter 8.2.7 installation.

This topic contains information about managing licenses in XenServer.

All hosts in a pool must be licensed. You can manage your XenServer license using the License Manager dialog box in XenCenter. The License Manager allows you to:

  • Assign XenServer license to managed servers. When you assign a license, XenServer contacts the Citrix License Server and requests the specified type of license. If a license is available, it is then checked out from the Citrix License Server.
  • Release XenServer licenses. When you release a license, XenServer contacts the Citrix License Server and checks the license back in.

The License Manager dialog also provides information about the licenses that are applied to your hosts. It lists the following information:

  • The license type.
  • The number of sockets.
  • The license expiry date.
  • The license server host and port.
  • The level of features that the license enables. For more information, see Licensing Overview.
  • Whether the host is eligible for support. A host is eligible for support if the license has an active Customer Success Services subscription associated with it.
  • Whether the license is deprecated. The support for some licenses has changed between versions of XenServer. Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 customers can continue to run workloads by using their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops entitlement. However, these licenses are deprecated for XenServer 8. If you use XenServer 8 to run your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or Citrix DaaS workloads, you must have a Premium Edition license. You can get a Premium Edition license from https://xenserver.com/buy.

Available licenses

XenCenter displays the following licenses:

For XenServer 8 or Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1:

  • XenServer Premium Per-Socket
  • XenServer Standard Per-Socket

For Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 only:

  • Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Premium
  • Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
  • Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Citrix Cloud

In Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1, these Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops licenses give you an entitlement to use Citrix Hypervisor.

In XenServer 8 and later, these licenses are not available for XenServer hosts. If you used XenServer 8 during its public preview phase with a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops license, this license now shows as deprecated in the License Manager dialog. Instead, you must get a XenServer Premium Edition license from https://xenserver.com/buy to use XenServer for Citrix workloads.

To discover the license status of servers and pools

To see the license type of a server or pool, select that server or pool in the tree view. XenCenter displays the license status in the title bar for that server or pool, after the server or pool name.

You can also go to the General tab of the server and find the license type in the License Details section.

Mixed pools of licensed and unlicensed hosts behave as if all hosts were unlicensed. In the tree view XenCenter displays unlicensed pools with a warning triangle icon.

To assign a XenServer license

  1. From the Tools menu, select License Manager.
  2. Select one or more hosts or pools that you want to assign a license and then select Assign License.
  3. In the Apply License dialog box, select the license you want to request from the License Server. For more information about various XenServer licenses, see Licensing Overview.
  4. Enter the License Server details and then click OK.

    Note:

    By default, the License Server uses the port 27000 for communication with Citrix products. If you changed the default port on the License Server, enter the appropriate number in the Port number box. For more information about changing port numbers due to conflicts, see the licensing topics in the Citrix Product Documentation website.

XenCenter contacts the specified Citrix License Server and requests a license for the specified servers. If successful, a license is checked out and the information displayed in the XenCenter License Manager is updated.

To release a XenServer license

  1. On the Tools menu, select License Manager.
  2. Select the servers or pools and then select Release License.
Managing XenServer Licenses