VMware Cloud Community
amircsco
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

OVF/OVA

I want to know how to clone my already-active VM in such a way that would not require re-activation from Windows.

4 Replies
abhilashhb
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Bind the license to MAC address?

It will prevent them to have two machines with same MAC even if they try to retain the MAC address.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

amircsco
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

thank you but what about if they use different VMs on different standalone ESXi hosts??

or even in different physical DataCenters??

i think binding to MAC is not enough for preventing them cloning VMs

abhilashhb
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

It is very hard to stop people that way. You will have to have a license agreement that says they can't do so legally.

If you see all the products in IT industry will work that way. Even VMWare licenses. I can buy a ESXi license and use it on two DC's.

If you still want to go ahead and resolve it, you will have to do an online activation of license. You will give them a key and they will connect to Internet and reach one of your servers to get the key activated. If they do this once, they should not be able to do this again unless they obtain another license/key.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

amircsco
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

unfortunately its to complex and costly to deploy online activation server, i had some  search  and i found there are 15 unique ID for each VM that can be used for license protection.i need some guide or document about how to bind license to these unique IDs and how to license expiration when one or more of them changed.

Reply
0 Kudos