SID

[Krischu]

Does a VM have it's own SID and is this ID kept when VMs are moved around?

Is it possible to get the host's SID from within the VM?

[weinstein5]

The SID is defined with in the guest OS - so yes the SID travels witht he VM -

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[Krischu]

Thanks, I was afraid so.

And how about a way finding out the SID of the hosting machine from within the VM?

Is there an API that allows for this?

[weinstein5]

Since the ESX/ESXi hosts is not windows box a SID is not generated it is uniquely identified by UUID, FQDN and IP address and even if it did have a SID you would not be able to otain the informaion from a VM running on the host - you would have to a script that would go out and access the information deirecly from the host or vCenter - 

[Krischu]

Is there a way to identify a VM uniquely and tell the difference if the VM moves?

I need to prevent duplication of licenses locked against the SID of the VM.

I cannot imagine that I'm the only one who is facing this problem.

VM replication must be a nightmare to all software vendors locking their programs with hostid based license keys.

What are recommended techniques to overcome this problem?

--

Christoph

[lamw]

This question comes up pretty often, unfortunately I'm not sure what is VMware's best practice on this. The UUID found with a VM does not have to be unqiue and it can be easily tampered with. There is a global "instanceUUID" which is unique within a vCenter configuration but the tracking of licensing must be done outside of the VM guest and from most of the questions posed in the forums, ISVs are trying to do it within the guest. I think reaching out to VMware's partner network, they should be able to give you some guidance on this