Troubleshooting licensing

Article
10/08/2009

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Troubleshooting licensing

What problem are you having?

No more connections can be made to a server product because the number of connections has reached the maximum that the server can accept.
The number of Per Device or Per User Client Access Licenses allocated is more than the number of client devices accessing a Windows Server 2003 operating system.
The number of Client Access Licenses allocated is fewer than the number of client devices used to access a product.
Client Access Licenses for a product are allocated to users who belong to another site.

No more connections can be made to a server product because the number of connections has reached the maximum that the server can accept.

Cause: The server product might be configured with Per Server licensing and the number of licenses might be exhausted.

Solution: Check license usage for the product on the server. The user can wait until others stop accessing the product. To eliminate the problem, you can purchase more licenses for the product.

See also: View product license information

The number of Per Device or Per User Client Access Licenses allocated is more than the number of client devices accessing a Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Cause: A Client Access License is required for each client device or user that accesses a Windows Server 2003 operating system. Any of the following situations can consume extra licenses:

A user who accessed a server product has been removed from the network.
A user is still on the network, but no longer uses the server product.
Several users access a product from a single client device.

Solution: To release allocated licenses, do the following:

When you remove a user from the network, use Licensing in Administrative Tools to delete the user.
Use Licensing in Administrative Tools to check how recently and often a user accesses a particular server product. Revoke a Client Access License if a user no longer uses the product.
When several users share one or more client devices, create a license group to allocate the same number of Client Access Licenses among the users as there are client devices.

The number of Client Access Licenses allocated is fewer than the number of client devices used to access a product.

Cause: A user accesses a server product from more than one device.

Solution: Whenever one or more users use several different devices, create a license group to allocate the pooled Client Access Licenses for the client devices to the users. This can cause more Client Access Licenses to be allocated than there are client devices accessing a product.

See also: Create a new license group

Client Access Licenses for a product are allocated to users who belong to another site.

Cause: License Manager tracks usage for a single site, and does not distinguish users who access a particular server product in more than one site from a single client device.

Solution: Use Licensing in Administrative Tools to revoke licenses or delete users from another site. Do not revoke a Client Access License from a user who uses different devices that belong to the different sites. The number of licenses then corresponds correctly to the number of client devices. If a user in a site shares a device with a user from another site (for example, a visitor from another division of the company), then create a license group to correctly allocate the corresponding Client Access License to both users.

Troubleshooting licensing