With more and more customers going Virtual, it would be nice if support for VMWare VMotion was added. VMWare VMotion is used with High Available VM Clusters and will migrate a Virtual server due to hardware failure.

The problem that occurs is with the activation codes which are tied to the physical servers hardware. If the Virtual server VMotions to a different physical server the PlanetPress Watch software will stop working until a new activation code is entered.

In a production enviroment this is less than desirable. I've included a link to VMWare VMotion.

VMWare VMotion Link

Hi Iceman,

As you state, the issue lies with with the Activation scheme for the Suite. We're looking into several different solutions for future versions. We know that with Virtual Environments becoming more and more popular, we have to address the problem.

Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do in the short term, as any change to the licensing/activation of our applications is a major undertaking. We'll keep working on it.

I'm glad to here the activation scheme may be changed. I'd strongly suggest doing so.

I've got PlanetPress running in several virtual environments and all of them, at one point or another, have had PlanetPress licensing mysteriously break (it shows up as "expired"). This can cause some serious heartburn!

Anything that can be done to make PlanetPress more virtual friendly will be a great benefit to an already outstanding software package!

Hi,
It seems to be a main tendency.
As reseller of PlanetPress, i can confirm some of our customer schedules to migrate on VMsphere Architectur and it s difficult to explain them they will need a Back_Up licence for each physical server in order to use PlanetPress (an outstanding software as mentionned previously).

Just ran into another environment where we're migrating PlanetPress to virtual. It's set up to load balance vm's across a farm (so licensing would essentially break if this happens).

In the short term, could you change the licensing behavior when it detects a significant hardware change? Right now, when that happens it immediately expires and stops functioning. Could you instead have it reset to a 30 day license? Just something to provide enough time to request the new license and not have PlanetPress do a critical shutdown.

As it stands, this licensing issue is becoming more of an obstacle in vm conversations.

-nth-

When it comes to activations/licensing, there are unfortunately no short term solutions. The scheme is at the heart of our software protection and is deeply woven into our products. Needless to say, this protection is important to us because any unauthorized use of the applications deprives us of significant revenue.

Until we revisit this scheme, I suggest you have a conversation with your OL representative to discuss other possible options for obtaining additional licenses.

Has there been any progress making the licensing more friendly to the VMWare sessions rolling over to a different physical server?

I have a customer who is saying that the FAQ implies that it is supported. I've corrected them, but they have requested that I seek clarification. They would like the FAQ to be updated to make it more clear if rollover is not supported.

What is the best solution to handle reactivation if a rollover situation occurs?


Q1442 - FAQ
Does PlanetPress Suite support VMWare ?

Details

PlanetPress Suite Version 6 officially supports VMWare, an application making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time.

Please note that the PlanetPress Suite End-User License Agreement (EULA) specifies that a PlanetPress Suite software license may only be used on a single virtual or physical PC at a time.

Created on 1/14/2008 2:08:00 PM

As stated in the Version 7 Release Notes, VMWare VMotion is not supported. It will not be supported until we overhaul the entire activation scheme, which is based on uniquely identifying PCs on which our applications run.

As soon as VMotion moves an image to a different server, our applications deactivate themselves because they detect they've been moved to a different PC. Applications hosted on VMWare images work fine as long as the VM image is run on the same PC where it was activated (which is why ESX is supported).

As for changing our activation scheme, this is no small task and is unlikely to occur in the next year. But it will change at some point, it's very high on our priority list.

Looking at my email it appears that I have another customer who deactivated due to a VM Ware image shifting to another server. They are however using v6. Is this in the version 6 release notes as well?

The the current release notes for v7 only mentions...

Supported Environments

Sorry, my mistake, I was actually looking at the upcoming V7.1 Release Notes, which obviously won't be published until V7.1 is.

So no, the Version 6 & 7 do not include this mention.