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Understanding static MAC address licensing in Azure

AprilYoho's avatar
AprilYoho
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 19, 2020
Many established software companies have tied their licensing to the MAC ADD of your server/computer. This causes a slew of issues such as: replacing hardware in your servers, running multiple networ...
Updated May 20, 2020
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April Edwards
azure
AprilYoho's avatar
AprilYoho
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 31, 2023

Hi bkoshy1365 !

1. The License server was an Azure Windows VM. We had to hold the license key on the server using a .txt file. 

2. The same .txt file required you to register the machine name AND MAC address. The process from the vendor was that you had to email them the machine name and MAC address, they would then send a .txt file back to you. We kept the license server in the 'hub' or management vNET so it wouldn't get taken down with our CI/CD process, but if in the future we needed to rebuild it, we could do it with IaC and not have to wait days on the vendor. 

We also had a backup of the VM, but yes, if the name of MAC address changed, we would have to submit for a new license file and be down for days. It was a risk we couldn't afford. The entire system is built with IaC and completely scalable, except that silly license server. Same as you, we couldn't risk losing that MAC address if something failed.