[THIN] Re: License server across WAN Link

  • From: "Russell Robertson" <russell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 20:36:06 -0000

Hello

 

To confirm Steve's times, once the Citrix server has contacted the
license server once, if it disconnects from it, it has 30 days before it
stops accepting connections - we actually tested this for a similar
piece of work just the other week, that's why I remember.

 

Angela, as you suggest, It might be worth reallocating a portion of your
license to the new license server (if you have overhead in your licenses
to do this) and then to point one of your servers to it.

 

Out of curiosity, why do you need a license server in remote location?

 

Cheers

 

Russell

Russell Robertson | Virtual Stream | T:+44 (0)1224 580970 | M:+44
(0)7881 922 745 | Microsoft, Citrix and VMware advisers |

 

 

From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Steve Greenberg
Sent: 09 February 2009 17:22
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: License server across WAN Link

 

Angela, 

 

You will not lose current license functionality when you return licenses
and re-allocate at mycitrix.com, the license file you have loaded into
your current license server will continue to work.

 

Any server can point to any license server, or, you can make it the farm
wide setting so you can mix and match as you need

 

When connection to a license server is lost the current sessions are
okay and the timeout/grace period comes in to effect at that point, new
sessions are allowed during this period ( I think it is 96 hours now,
don't remember for sure). However I think there is an issue when you
reboot a server because it will not get's it startup license- can anyone
else verify this?

 

 

Steve Greenberg

Thin Client Computing

34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453

Scottsdale, AZ 85266

(602) 432-8649

www.thinclient.net

steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

________________________________

From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Angela Smith
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 5:20 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: License server across WAN Link

 

Hi Jeremy

Thanks for your reply.  The WAN link is 30Mb so Im hoping the Citrix
Servers will have a reliable connection to the License Server at all
times.  I will give it a go.  I read a few Citrix documents but I have a
few questions.

1) I need to get my licenses re-issued as the server name in the UK is
different to the existing License Server.  If I return existing licenses
will my Production farm stop working?  There may be a gap of a few days
before the new license file is added to the new Licensing Server.  I
want to ensure existing Citrix Production users are not impacted when
the licenses are returned.

2) Are there any issues with setting 1 Citrix Server to use the new
Licensing Server in the UK whilst the other Citrix servers point to
local License Server?  Id like to do this for testing purposes to ensure
the Citrix Servers are working off the remote UK License Server before
moving the entire farm to the remote License Server.

3) If the Citrix Server looses connectivity to the License Server, will
the existing Citrix User sessions be dropped or would they be given a
grace license automatically until the connectivity to the Citrix License
Server is restored?  Is this seamless to the user?

Thanks
Ang
 

________________________________

Subject: [THIN] Re: License server across WAN Link
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 19:34:46 +1100
From: Jeremy.Saunders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi Ang,

 

The short answer is that this will most probably cause problems and is a
bad design. There are some awesome whitepapers from Citrix on how the
licensing service works. But basically this is what I typically write in
my design documents (taken straight from the whitepapers)...

 

"At startup, a XenApp server talks to the License Server and gets a
startup license. This action will consume 9.87Kb of bandwidth. If the
License Server is not available, the server goes into the grace period
and the IMA (Independent Management Architecture) Service reports an
error to the Event Log. The process of getting a startup licenses also
occurs if the IMA Service is restarted at any point.

 

Every 2 to 5 minutes the XenApp will exchange a heartbeat with the
license server to determine if the license server is still available.
The amount of bandwidth in this transaction is 462 bytes for each
server. The heartbeats are randomised between 2 to 5 minutes from when
the server checks out a start-up license.

 

Every 24 hours the XenApp server will request a refresh of the license
server data, this is to check if license allocation has been increased
or decreased. The amount of bandwidth in this transaction is 9.87Kb for
each server.

 

When a user logs on, the XenApp server tries for 5 seconds to request a
license; if this process fails the user gets a grace period license (30
days)."

 

So you can see that communication to the licensing server is important,
otherwise your servers may continually (or randomly) dish out grace
period licenses, which also causes delays in the logon time.

 

At the end of the day you can only try it and see. You can set the UK
license server at the server level in the Access Management Console on
one of your servers and see how this behaves.

 

Cheers,

Jeremy.

 

 

From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Angela Smith
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 3:10 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] License server across WAN Link

 

Hi

Our organisation is looking at utilising a "centralized" Citrix
Licensing server in another country (UK) across a decent sized WAN Link.
We currently have a local Citrix Licensing Server.  Will there be any
performance issues with accessing the new license server across the WAN?
Should the license server be on the same LAN as the Citrix Servers?  Are
there any gotchas in changing licensing servers?

Setup is Windows 2003 with Presentation Server 4

Thanks
Ang 

________________________________

Combine your email accounts here! Want to marry your mail?
<http://livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=633386> 

________________________________

Confidentiality and Privilege Notice 
This document is intended solely for the named addressee.  The
information contained in the pages is confidential and contains legally
privileged information. If you are not the addressee indicated in this
message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you
may not copy or deliver this message to anyone, and you should destroy
this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.
Confidentiality and legal privilege are not waived or lost by reason of
mistaken delivery to you.

________________________________

 

________________________________

Let ninemsn property help! Need a new place to rent, share or buy?
<http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Edomain%2Ecom%
2Eau%2F%3Fs%5Fcid%3DFDMedia%3ANineMSN%5FHotmail%5FTagline&_t=774152450&_
r=Domain_tagline&_m=EXT> 

Other related posts: