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Migrating Laserfiche systems from one VMWare system to a new VMWare system and LF Licensing

Laserfiche Licensing
Updated July 14, 2022
asked on July 6, 2022

Hi There,

 

We are in the process of building a new VMWare cluster with newer, updated hardware, as well as a new version of VMWare from what the current cluster is on. We will be migrating a bunch of Laserfiche systems from the old VMWare cluster (Version 6.5 VMWare) to the newer VMWare cluster (Version 7 VMware). The newer cluster will have different CPU's and such as well, being updated hardware.

 

Based on the post linked below, the VM fingerprint should remain the same even moving to a new VMWare cluster with newer hardware since it's reading the VM hardware file and not the physical hardware, but we are looking for confirmations one way or the other since we will need to factor in re-licensing for a lot of Laserfiche environments to our time estimates depending.

 

Hardware fingerprint & V-motion - Laserfiche Answers

 

Has anyone done a similar process with Laserfiche systems from one VMWare cluster to another that might know if that will invalidate the licensing?

 

Thanks!

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Replies

replied on July 6, 2022

Hi Cody,

We recommend customers who use Laserfiche Directory Server (should be everyone now) have their SPs submit a domain license request through the Activation Keys section of the Support site. The link will take you to a request form with a few fields. Submitting it triggers a process that results in automatic approval in most cases.

A Domain License is a no-cost feature added to a Primary License. Once enabled, it allows Laserfiche application license checks to validate against the Active Directory domain(s) of the server(s) hosting the applications, rather than those servers' "hardware fingerprints". Hardware fingerprint validation pre-dates widespread server virtualization and can result in license validation issues if/when virtual machine properties change. Laserfiche recommends all customers running Laserfiche 10.4 and above enable and use a Domain License. Laserfiche Directory Server 10.4.5 and above has the ability to selectively issue hardware fingerprint-based licenses for applications running on DMZ servers that are not joined to any AD domain.

The domain value(s) are used for license checks against the Active Directory domain of the server(s) Laserfiche components are installed on. The domains of any URLs used to access Laserfiche web applications are not involved in this domain license check - only the AD domain(s) servers are joined to.

The process will add both the specified domain (e.g., "example.com") and a wildcard entry covering all subdomains one level down("*.example.com"). If you have a domain with four or more components (e.g., "emea.corp.example.com"), submit either the full subdomain or one level up (e.g., "corp.example.com") so it is covered by the wildcard entry ("*.corp.example.com"). If you have a legitimate need for additional domain entries, please submit another request.

After the domain license request is confirmed, you will need to first Renew the primary license in Laserfiche Directory Server so it picks up the new Domain values, and then re-issue all the individual application licenses as Domain licenses. If you do that before the VMware migration, you're essentially guaranteed to not have any license invalidation issues from the move.

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replied on July 7, 2022

Hi Sam,

 

Many of these systems are not domain joined, so domain locked licenses are not an option. We are simply asking if anyone has moved a Laserfiche system from one VMWare cluster to another and if so, if that license needed to be re-activated. Moving from host to host does not cause licensing to break on our environment, however we have not moved from one cluster to another as of yet.

 

Thanks,

Cody

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replied on July 7, 2022

If the cluster move doesn't cause MAC addresses to change and you're not changing resource amounts, the hardware fingerprints are unlikely to break. We have seen some cluster migration scenarios where relicensing ended up being necessary and plenty of others where nothing broke.

The safe thing to do is build in a time buffer to relicense everything in the unlikely but non-zero chance that it's necessary.

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replied on July 14, 2022

Hi Sam,

We did a quick test with a test system and migrated it to another VMWare system that has a different physical CPU, and we did see the MAC stay the same but the fingerprint did get picked up. It appeared that Laserfiche Server picked up the license without issues, however LFDS was complaining that it needed to be re-licensed. Would LFDS be more sensitive to that sort of change?

 

Note: The process we did is slightly different, as we brought up a replica of the VM on a secondary VMWare system vs migrating the current one, but that's the only option we have available currently to test this sort of process.

 

Thanks,

Cody

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replied on July 14, 2022

Hi Cody,

I'm not privy to details of the hardware fingerprint (hwfp) sensitivity function(s) so I couldn't say why LFDS broke and LFS didn't.

Because LFDS does not support deployment on Windows Workgroup machines and must be deployed on a domain-joined server, I would still recommend getting a domain locked license and then using hwfp licenses for any individual applications that are not on domain-joined servers. Like so:

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