Rapid Recovery 6.3 - Installation and Upgrade Guide

Managing Rapid Recovery licenses

This section contains information about managing licenses for your Rapid Recovery Cores, protected machines, hypervisors, and appliances.

This section includes the following topics:

Understanding Rapid Recovery licenses

There are three types of Rapid Recovery software licenses:

• Trial, which stops taking snapshots after 14 days,
• Subscription, which has an expiration date, and
• Perpetual, which has no expiration.

Many Rapid Recovery users start with a trial license, which has limited capabilities. After 14 days, if the circumstance requires, a group administrator can extend the trial license by 28 days. Otherwise, you can purchase and register a subscription or perpetual license.

Quest delivers Rapid Recovery licenses in a file. A license file contains a pool of licenses that you can distribute to the machines that you want to protect. This pool is reflected on the Rapid Recovery License Portal. For each license type previously listed, there are two types of license pools:

• Enterprise. Each license in this pool can be applied to an installation of the Rapid Recovery Agent or one socket on a hypervisor host using agentless protection, regardless of space used.
• Capacity. These licenses cover the data you protect, measured in terabytes (TBs), regardless of the number of Rapid Recovery Agents installed or sockets you have. If you exceed the amount of space allocated to the license you purchased, you must purchase another license.

Capacity licensing supports two models:

• Front-end capacity licenses. Software installations use a front-end capacity license model, in which the capacity specified in the license limits the amount of data (in TB) from the volumes under protection. Front-end capacity is measured based on the amount of data on protected machines prior to compression and deduplication.
• Back-end capacity licenses. DL series backup appliances use a back-end capacity license model, in which the capacity specified in the license limits the size of the repository (in TB) you can use on the appliance.

In release 6.3, a Core can use only one license pool type. For example, if your Core uses a capacity-based license pool, it cannot also use an enterprise license pool. The reverse is also true.

License pool types cannot be combined into a single license file. For example, you cannot include an enterprise license pool and a capacity license pool under the same perpetual license.

License files are text files that end with the .lic file extension. The following are examples of license files:

• License files can appear as nine characters in length, consisting of three groups of numbers, each separated by a hyphen; for example, 123-456-789.lic.
• Software-based licenses can appear in the format Software-<Group name>.lic, with the group named after the customer name or account; for example, Software-YourCompany.lic.
• DL appliance licenses can appear in the format <Appliance Series>-<Group name>.lic, with the group named after customer name account; for example, DL4X00 Series-YourCompany.lic.

Rapid Recovery supports these license types in two modes: the standard phone-home mode, and non-phone home mode, which has several limitations. Subscription licenses run only in phone-home mode. Perpetual and trial licenses can use phone-home or non-phone home licenses. To see how this mode affects the use of personal data in Rapid Recovery, see the topic "Managing privacy." To see restrictions on non-phone home licenses, or information on obtaining a license using this mode, see "Obtaining and using non-phone-home licenses." These topics are in the Rapid Recovery 6.3 User Guide.

Rapid Recovery lets you manage licenses or contact the license server directly from the Core Console by selecting (Settings) from the icon bar and clicking Licensing.

The Licensing settings include the following information:

License Details:

• Change License. Lets you change an existing license associated with the Core by uploading a license file or entering a license key.
• Add License. This option is available only for DL series backup appliances and lets you upload a license file or entering a license key.
• License Portal Group. This option opens the license portal for group management.
• License type. Types of licenses include Trial, Subscription, or Enterprise. For more information, see the topic "Understanding software license types" in the Rapid Recovery License Portal User Guide.
• License status. Indicates the status of the license. An active status ensures snapshots can continue as scheduled. If the license is blocked, or expired, or if the Core has not been able to communicate with the Rapid Recovery License Portal past the grace period, snapshots are paused until the license status is corrected.
• License key expires in.This option is available only when using a subscription license, and shows the duration of time before the subscription expires, in days.

License Constraints:

• Maximum snapshots per day. Indicates the number of backups that are limited by the specific license.

License Pool:

• Pool size. The license pool is the number of non-trial licenses available to allocate across groups and subgroups in the Rapid Recovery License Portal. The size of the pool determines how many licenses can be allocated. For more information, see the topic "Understanding license pools" in the Rapid Recovery License Portal User Guide.
• Used by this Core. Indicates the number of machines from the license pool that are protected by this Core.
• Total used in group. Indicates the total number of machines protected within the same license group as this Core.
• Phone home disabled. If visible, this status indicates that the Core does not communicate with the Rapid Recovery License Portal or the QorePortal. Auto update is disabled, and no personal information is communicated between the Core and Quest Software Inc. or any other entity, in compliance with GDPR policies.

License Server. These settings apply to standard (phone home) licenses. These settings are not applicable for appliances and other non-phone-home licenses:

• License server address. Displays an active URL for the license server associated with this Core.
• Last response from the licensing server. Indicates whether the last attempted communication with the license server portal was successful.
• Last contact with licensing server. Displays the date and time of the last successful contact with the licensing server.
• Next attempt to contact the licensing server. Indicates the next scheduled date and time to attempt communication with the licensing server.
• Contact Now. This button contacts the license server on demand. Use this option after making changes to your license configuration, to register changes immediately rather than waiting for the next scheduled attempt.

For more information on licenses, see theRapid Recovery License Portal User Guide.

For more information on updating or changing a license key or file, see Updating or changing a license.

Users of DL series backup appliances can also add licenses to the Core if necessary. For more information, see Adding a license.

For more information on contacting the license portal server, see Contacting the Rapid Recovery License Portal server.

You can also view licensing information for a single protected machine. For more information, see Viewing license information on a machine.

Updating or changing a license

1. Navigate to the Rapid Recovery Core.
2. On the icon bar, click (Settings).
3. Scroll down on the right side of the Settings page until you can see the License Server heading.
   The Core settings for licensing appear.
4. To update or change the existing license associated with your Core, at the top of the License Details core settings area, click Change License.
   The Change License dialog box appears.
5. If you want to manually enter the license key, skip to step 6. If you want to upload a license file, do the following:
   1. To upload a license file, from the Choose license file or enter license key field, click Choose File.

      In the Open or File Upload dialog box, navigate through the file system and locate the new license file you want to use. For example, locate Software-YourCompany.lic.

   2. Click the license file, and then click Open.

      The dialog box closes. The license file you selected appears in the license text field.

   3. Click Continue.
      The license file you selected is authenticated, and that license is associated with your Core.
   4. Skip to step 7.
6. To manually enter the license key, in the Choose license file or enter license key text field, enter the license key carefully, and then click Continue.
   The dialog box closes, the license file you selected is authenticated, and that license is associated with your Core.
7. If you see the Quick Start Guide welcome page, you can click Start Guide to run through this feature, or you can click Close to close the guide. This is the last step required for this procedure.

   NOTE: For more information about the Quick Start Guide, see "Understanding the Quick Start Guide" in the Rapid Recovery 6.3 User Guide.

8. If performing these steps on the Core Settings page, scroll down on the right side of the Settings page until you can see the License Server heading.
9. In the License Server area, click Contact Now.

   Once the license is applied to the license server, any associated protected machines automatically update with the new license.

Adding a license

1. Navigate to the Rapid Recovery Core Console.
2. On the icon bar, click (Settings).
3. Scroll down on the right side of the Settings page until you can see the Licensing heading.
   The Core settings for licensing appear.
4. To add a license and associate it with your Core, at the top of the License Details core settings area, click Add Additional License. In the resulting dialog box, do one of the following:
   1. If you want to manually enter the license key, type the key carefully, and then click Continue.
      The dialog box closes, and the license file you selected is authenticated, and that license is associated with your Core.
   2. If you want to upload a license file, click Choose File.

      In the File Upload dialog box, navigate through the file system and locate the new license file you want to use. For example, locate Software-YourCompany.lic.

   3. Click the license file, and then click Open.

      The File Upload dialog box closes. The selected license file appears in the current dialog box.

   4. In the dialog box, click Continue.
      The dialog box closes, and the license file you selected is authenticated, and that license is associated with your Core.
5. Scroll down on the right side of the Settings page until you can see the License Server heading.

   The Licensing Core settings appear.

6. In the License Server area, click Contact Now.

   Once the license is applied to the license server, any associated protected machines automatically update with the new license.