Important notes on licensing

Consider the following licensing related items, when planning a PME system:

Trial license and new system installations

New system installations of PME have a Trial license that expires after 90 days. The Trial license enables all of the software features. We recommend that you have purchased license activation IDs ready when the system is deployed. Trial license deactivates after the purchased licenses have been activated.

Trial license and system upgrades

No Trial license is given when you upgrade a PME system from version 2022 or version 2021 to version 2023.

A new Trial license is given when you upgrade a PME system from versions earlier than 2021 to version 2023.

Upgrade licenses

PME systems must be upgraded using a services plan with software assurance. Activating or renewing a services plan might add extra time to the licensing process.

Starting from PME 2021, License Configuration Tool is used for license configuration. Floating License Manager and License Manager are not supported for license configuration. These two applications are unusable after system upgrade.

NOTE: It is recommended to uninstall Floating License Manager and License Manager from Control Panel after system upgrade. If you have other systems installed on the same server, for which the licensing is based on Floating License Manager, see Using Floating License Manager after system upgrade for steps to use Floating License Manager.

For system upgrade, you must return the licenses using Floating License Manager (for PME versions earlier than 2021) or License Configuration Tool (for PME version later than 2021) and after upgrade, activate the new license using License Configuration Tool. For new license contact Sales Portal. See Licensing resources section for Sales Portal contact details.

System migration and license returns

A license can only be activated on one PME server at a time. For a system migration, you must return the licenses on the old system and then activate the license on the new system. No trial license is given for a migrated system. Contact Technical Support if you forgot to return the licenses on the old system and they have become untrusted. See Licensing resources for contact information.

NOTE: System migration includes the case where you reinstall PME on the same server after the operating system has been reinstalled.

System license usage

You must have enough server licenses to set up the secondary servers. If the number of server licenses is less than the number of servers that is configured, PME communication stops.

Licensing and Firewalls

The PME clients access a licensing service that is running on the PME server to confirm that valid licensing has been activated. The IP port used by the licensing server must not be blocked if a firewall is used between the PME client and server. See IP Ports for details.