12.2.2+hf1 License Overview gone, Product Activation Wizard !?

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi.

 

This is a twofold question: Have any community members experienced this, and also: can someone from Automic possibly clear this up for me? Because otherwise we'd be forced to make a support ticket from this.

 

We just updated 12.2.1+hf2 to 12.2.2+hf1 on "test", and the plan to update production soon stands, but my license overview now looks like this:

 

 

Unless this means I do not need licenses anymore (doubtful), how are we to check our current usage and compliance? Just a hunch, is this possibly a remnant from a licensing-free development build?

 

Furthermore, this greeted us:

 

 

Followed by this:

 

 

Do we need to do this? What happens if we don't - does this disable or lock down any features? Were we informed about this and missed the memo; I can't at least find it in the change notes for engine or AWI. I don't know if I plan to use a Portfolio License Agreement because I don't know what that is. The documentation link leads to a huge scrolling list at CA, which redirects to the usual Automic documentation, where I could not on the fly find anything regarding this new process.

 

Please kindly share your experience or clarify.

 

Thanks!

[Spencer Cockrell]

Hi Carsten, 

 

License Key Checks have been removed - please see the following post:

 

Important Changes In Automation Engine V12.2.2 

 

To address the popup - the fact that this occurs even after activation is a known bug. You will need your Enterprise Site ID, but afterwards should be able to finish your activation. At the current time, this is not the case and the activation window will still pop up upon next login. We're investigating this issue internally, but don't have a resolution at this time.

 

With this said, however, it is not required and won't stop any Automation Engine processing - only the ability to send telemetry data.

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi,

 

thanks for the quick reply. I still maintain that this should be added to the change log. Not all customers read the communities at all times. Plus, the documentation link should link to some actual documentation on the matter.

 

But the vital question for me is this: as I can not imagine that Automic has now dropped any license requirements as a whole, how can we see our current license usage and ensure compliance, if the license overview is defunct?

[Keld Mollnitz]

Carsten_Schmitz, Welcome to the Club.

 

I upgraded our Sandbox to 12.2.2 and was surprised to be met with the same two 'issues' as you and asked myself the same questions as you..

 

/Keld.

[David Ainsworth]

Hi Carsten_Schmitz

Licensing and contractual entitlement are two different things.

The technical license checks in the product have been removed.

The contractual entitlement remains the same so you can use whatever you are contracted to use.

 

The license checks did not cover all technical entitlements before so the license overview did not always accurately represent entitlement.  

The CA products license checks were all removed years ago (I think Autosys was 10 years ago) so this is a CA Technologies initiative.

 

On the Activate Product popup, that has caused some confusion and will be renamed to something more meaningful in v12.3.

It does not cause the product to stop working in any way.

 

cheers

David

[Peter Mordinyi]

Hello,

it`s ok that Broadcom will collect telemetry data of the Number of Automation Engine / HA instances and the Number of Active nodes (it was the same at the license), but why do u need information about the number of job executions.

That are company internal informations and Broadcom doesnt need it to sale more number of nodes.

There should be an option where we can decide what to allow to transfer to Broadcom.

Is this possible?

Thx Peter

[Christian Boeck]

Hi Peter,

I think this Blog can help you

Important Changes in Automation Engine V12.2.2 

Read the comment from Philipp

Rgds

Christian

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi David,

 

I notice that the option to change agents into different licensing categories has been removed also. We do require this option for fulfillment reasons.

Cheers,

Carsten

[FrankMuffke]

Hi Carsten

 

just observed that just the view in AWI was removed, so as workaround you could use AWI 12.2.1 to check your license overview.

 

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Carsten Schmitz]

Yeah, that would work for the time being (until some day, it probably doesn't  ).

 

Not my preferred workaround though, keeping old versions of interfaces around to monitor my licensing

[FrankMuffke]

Hi

 

You should got used to it using old USer Interfaces to get the data you need.

 

e.g. use V12 JUI instead of AWI 12.0 cause some features wer just "forgotten".

 

 

 

cheers, Wolfgang

[Vlad Navazhylau]

@Frank Muffke & @Carsten Schmitz & @David Ainsworth

At the beginning of 2020 we upgraded to 12.3​​. Recently I tried to see if there is a view for License counts using v12.0.9 JUI (Java User Interface) and the License Overview page does not show anymore any information/data (empty).

Is the license info completely gone from 12.3 data?

What is the recommended way now to gather statistics to ensure Agent counts aligns with contractual entitlement?

Also, from Agents perspective, is there any difference anymore between Production and Non-Production License category or they all the same?

Thanks,

Vlad Navazhylau


​​

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi.

Okay, the full story, with the disclaimer that this is my own understanding and all opinions are my own because some of this might be a sensitive topic.

You are correct: There is no way to see any dependable usage anymore, such as a "license overview", and the old Java UI won't show you any info either because the "technical requirement for license files" has been removed, meaning you can't get any license files anymore for 12.3.

That does NOT mean that Automic can not audit you: Depending on your contract you may be required to run their license validation tool periodically and send the results to them.

Now if you ask "can' I just get the license counts from that tool myself?" that's good thinking, but the answer, sadly, is "no". The output from the tool includes historic information and final scores are only "computed" at Automic (and also, you may find that you disagree with Automic on what constitutes a "license usage" with regards to things such as historic usage - e.g. does an agent you used last week count today? You may say "no", but Automic might say "yes"!).

It is, in my humble opinion, a bit of a sad state of affairs that some clients can not readily see their current, let alone past license usage in the product at any time, but that's how it is.

For my company, I have reached an agreement with someone at Automic where we count our current license usage based on certain agreed upon parameters and a method that I can not disclose here, and Automic has agreed to this being binding. All I can say is that we had to develop an additional external tool for it. But you need to talk to Automic and see if you can reach a similar agreement; your Key Account Manager may be a good starting point. There may also be alternative contract options available where you don't need to count your licenses for various reasons, some might want to inquire about those with their KAM as well.

As for bringing back a convinient interface such as the license overview, I think you are in principle addressing the correct person in your post, but as a small hint, it's neither me nor Frank Muffke :)

Best regards,
Carsten

[Carsten Schmitz]

Oh, and also:

Also, from Agents perspective, is there any difference anymore between Production and Non-Production License category or they all the same?

Technically, the agent doesn't care and technical license categories have died with the need for technical licensing information (i.e. license files).

Legally there may well be differences and you are well advised to check your entitlements against over-usage, e.g. it's possible that past usage models allowed you to use a test license for every production license, but this practice might have changed at some point.

I'm sorry for being cryptic but as I said, I need to make sure my advise here is generic and not sensitive.

Hth,

[Vlad Navazhylau]

Thanks Carsten.

I found also your earlier post with some SQL queries, those helpful as well.

https://community.broadcom.com/enterprisesoftware/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=1435&MID=815541

Vlad.

[Peter Grundler]

Hi Wolfgang,

alternatively (if a license file was loaded into the database) you can use any DB client or VARA.SQLI to run "select * from UC_LIC". in general or:

select LIC_Platform as "Platform", LIC_Class as "Class", LIC_Category as "Category", LIC_Date as "Date", LIC_Number as "Count", LIC_Event as "Event", LIC_Volume1 as "Processors", LIC_Restriction as "Restriction"
from UC_LIC with (nolock)
where LIC_Platform not like '%Checksum%'
order by LIC_Lnr;

kind regards,
Peter

[Patrick Tiller]

We used to get a weekly report using a similar query, but now the UC_LIC tables are empty.