[GIS] No way to De-authorise ArcGIS Server and regain license

arcgis-10.0arcgis-license-managerarcgis-server

At v10 of ArcGIS Server, from what I understand of the new license model, it is not possible to de-authorise ArcGIS Server (like you can with Desktop)

Clients have visibility over their licences with the handy Customer Care Portal tool.
– From here you can see how many licenses you have authorised and how many you still have available.

Scenario:
– Purchase 1 license for ArcGIS Server (license level irrelevant) CCP: 0 Auth, 1 Avail)
– Install & Authorise in a dev environment CCP: 1 Auth, 0 Avail)
– Roll over to production, install and attempt to authorise = Fails as no license available
= No ability to release license, so have to get in touch with ESRI Inc Customer Care to reset the license

This might not be too tricky if your over in States, but what about the rest of the world? Get in touch with distributor –> to get in touch with Redlands/Customer Care –> and then back again = Takes lot of time.

Just wondering if I am either missing something or if there is a better workaround to the above?

At 9.3.1 and prior, it was possible to install using the same ECP several times, and through the online registration process, if Redlands saw that an ECP with one server license was getting authorised lots of times, then the client would get a phone call.
= I imagine the new model tries to take the work away from ESRIs end, but can be inefficient when trying to roll over.

  • I also assume that if my machine died, and I had to reinstall again, still would have to get in touch with Customer Care to reset license?

Best Answer

This is just about Server licenses; I haven't figured out how to get my EDN license showing up on the provisioning page as well.

I had this issue when I made a mistake and authorized a staging server with the Enterprise Advanced license (it should have been Standard). I just did what I've done on pre-10 servers and authorized it with the right license file. When I looked at the Provisioning page on the customer care site, the Advanced server license showed that it was not available. I figured that I should be able to update it on that page, but there isn't anything.

I contacted customer care and it looks like this is one of those oversights by design. The explanations I got from them over the next week or so were:

  1. There's no way to do it because the developers of the system said no one will ever need to change their licenses. To fix it:
    • Call customer support and ask them to manually change it; this can take from a half to a full day to get done. You can do it up to two days ahead of time.
    • The provisioning system is apparently very buggy, or at least is going through constant revision, and with each revision any manual changes are overwritten in the database. If you call more than two days ahead of the time you need the license changed, your changes may be lost.
  2. Go ahead and use the license on another server. They expect you to have to upgrade and replace machines and they actually realize people in the real world need to run the same license on two machines during a transition. The provisioning system is supposed to allow four months for such a case.
  3. After four months of the same authorization running on two servers, the system will do something to render at least one of the authorizations invalid. I'm paraphrasing here, because they weren't at all clear, but I'm assuming one of the servers will no longer run the ESRI software at that point.

So you can go for a while with two servers on the same authorization for a while, but if you don't take one down, they'll do something. But you still have to call and ask them to update things, and as far as I know it's still a manual process so I wouldn't leave it to the last minute.

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