Licensing Overview
The OAS Platform is a licensed product. Each server instance running the OAS Platform must be licensed.
Once a license is purchased a serial number will be issued. This represents the master license serial number. With this serial number you can activate your OAS instances.
An example serial number is ABC_241105_1234. This serial number is your unique key and is mapped to your purchased OAS capabilities:
- The number of server or container instances
- The number of tags per instance or distributed across instances (flex tags)
- Distributed networking (DNA) enabled or disabled
- The enabled features (products and connectors)
- The maintenance expiry date
Your license must be activated on unique server instances (depending on how many instances your license includes). Once activated, the license is tied to that specific server based on parameters such as the system component and IDs.
Your license can be moved if you hold a valid maintenance contract.
👉 Move a license 🔗
Containers
Standard server licenses are tied to fixed hosts or the host of a virtual machine. However, if you wish to run OAS on highly dynamic hardware or in Cloud services and you as using services such as Docker and other virtualization platforms, you will need to consider the licensing requirements of OAS. This is because a change in the underlying hardware components or identifiers could trigger a license deactivation.
The OAS container licenses are designed for this purpose. When running OAS in a container, the license is not activated directly on the running container instance, but instead it is licensed via a separate OAS License Hosting Service. The License Hosting Service supports both Windows and Linux, but it must be installed on server instance where the underlying hardware is less likely to change such as a dedicated server or a VM running on dedicated infrastructure.
The OAS license is activated on the License Host and each OAS container instance will connect to the license host to obtain the license. For example, if the license supports up to 10 container instances, then up to 10 containers can be started and connected to the License Host.
Please note that each activated license is for fixed set of tags per instance and activated features (products and drivers). In other words, each container will have the same number of tags and the same available features. If you need different containers with different features you will have to install multiple License Host instances or you will need a license that covers all possible feature combinations.
Flex Tag Licensing
Flex tag licensing allows you to distribute tags across multiple instances. For example, if you purchased 300K flex tags and 6 instances. You can allocate these tags across the 6 instances.
With a flex tag license you still receive a single master serial number, but you don’t use this to activate OAS. Instead, you decide how many tags you want on each instance and OAS support will issue the serial numbers as per your request. You can then use those serial numbers to activate each individual OAS instance.
Demo License
When you download and install OAS on a server for the first time it will automatically be running in demo mode. This is a 30-day, fully featured instance of OAS with unlimited tags. This is the best way to learn about OAS and prototype your solution with devices and client systems to ensure your requirements can be met.