For virtual machines, especially VMs that can move between physical hardware, you should use TurboFloat. It was designed for this purpose. See: Licensing from inside a virtual machine or hypervisor
VMware vSphere
support15We have a customer that has our software installed on a Windows Server guest OS that runs on VMware vSphere.
We have allowed the customer's license to be activated on VMs and they are able to successfully license the software, but after some period of time (weeks, months), their license becomes invalidated, and they need to call us in order for us to deactivate the product key, so they can re-activate it.
My understanding is that vSphere can dynamically manage the VM; I would guess that LimeLM is picking up on some change to the VM after vSphere has made some change to it.
Is there any guidance that I can give to the customer (e.g. a way to setup the VM), so these invalidations do not occur?
Is there a flag I could set in the LimeLM license to be less restrictive? I am not that concerned about this customer trying to pirate my software.
support15Of several hundred activations, only 2 (important) customers are using vSphere.
Is TurboFloat the only option?
This will require me to upgrade to the "Plus" plan, and spend some time integrating TurboFloat into my software.
As well, I don't want to make this a requirement to use my software, as the current TurboActivate (fixed) license is working for 99.5% of my customers.
Is TurboFloat the only option?
For this particular problem? Yes.
This will require me to upgrade to the "Plus" plan, and spend some time integrating TurboFloat into my software.
Every plan comes with 10 free floating licenses. So if it's less than that, then you could use your current plan.
As well, I don't want to make this a requirement to use my software, as the current TurboActivate (fixed) license is working for 99.5% of my customers.
It would only be a requirement on virtual machines. Then the customer would have the option of running your app on a real machine or on a virtual machine. It also gives you the option of charging different prices for your customers (presumably charging more for customers that are using your app in specialized ways).
support15Our "application" is composed of a number of Windows Services and GUI apps. Currently, each Service and GUI app all check the license independently using TurboActivate (sharing the same .dat) file.
If all of these applications and services were changed to use TurboFloat - does the TurboFloat Server treat each service and application as a separate lease, or does it treat the lease as the same for the virtual machine?
No, all the separate apps would be treated as the same lease.