Licensing Explained
**UPDATED POST ON LICENSING HERE**http://support.adminarsenal.com/entries/59777174-PDQ-Licensing-Explained ------
One of the most common questions we get is how licensing for Admin Arsenal works.
AA is licensed per Administrator (or, more accurately, the person who will be running Admin Arsenal). Once a user has a license for AA, they can install and run it on as many computers as they would like, clients, servers, laptops, etc. As long as each person who uses the console has a license, then the requirements have been met. There is no per computer charge, either for the console itself or for any of the computers it will manage. We believe that this scheme is simplest, and most cost effective, for the small business and departmental administrator. No need to worry about how many computers are being managed or their locations. |
One of the most common questions we get is how licensing for Admin Arsenal works.
AA is licensed per Administrator (or, more accurately, the person who will be running Admin Arsenal).
Once a user has a license for AA, they can install and run it on as many computers as they would like, clients, servers, laptops, etc. As long as each person who uses the console has a license, then the requirements have been met.
There is no per computer charge, either for the console itself or for any of the computers it will manage.
We believe that this scheme is simplest, and most cost effective, for the small business and departmental administrator. No need to worry about how many computers are being managed or their locations.
Comments
1: According to the license you are not allowed to run BS on more than one PC at the same time. So if you want to host a dedicated server and connect from your home PC, you would need two licenses.
Thank you for pointing that out, at some point our old licence file (the one we used before we changed to per administrator licensing) got put back into the build process. We'll get that fixed ASAP.
Does this licesing apply to pdq deploy? I love that you don't require a license for each client that will be managed. I'm not too thrill about the per admin license. I have the free version right now. It's installed in only 1 server, which will be the only home for it. Can you have an option for per installation? I think most people will just install it on 1 server unless they are spread out in differen locations & want to lighten the bandwidth load. Then they would install it in several servers.
I'm the only one who uses the product out of 3 people in IT. However, there is a rare chance that the other 2 may use it on some rare occassion. I don't really want to pay for 2 extra licenses for rare, occassional use.
Your thoughts?
Jonathan, the per admin pricing is only for admins who use the product. If you have three admins but only you use our products then you would only need 1 license for your entire organization.
If however there are times that the other admins use it (to run reports, deployments, etc.) then they would need a license as well.
Our goal is to make licensing as easy to understand and implement as possible, while still ensuring that we get a good value for the use of our products. Licensing is always a balancing act. :)
How about service providers? Is a license for each of their clients needed or "per Administrator" licensing model applies here as well?
Ivan,
Licenses are only needed by the administrators that use the software, so one person that uses it with different clients would still only need the one license. If the client wanted to use it as well, they would need their own license.
Adam, thank you for your quick response.
Q: "We assume this means we need 8 licenses"
A: Correct. If 8 users use PDQ Deploy then 8 licenses are required.
Q: "...but will it function properly in a multi-user environment such as a terminal server or does it need to be installed from our workstations"
A: PDQ Deploy was designed to run as a single instance (i.e. one user using it at a time) however we have customers who do exactly what you are asking (running from a Terminal Services server) and they are pleased with its performance. There is a possibility of stepping on each other (for instance if someone deletes a package just before you attempt to deploy it.
As to the licensing. Pro mode simply unlocks the Pro features such as scheduling, building multi-step, complex packages, and automatically submitting target machines for an inventory scan. Pro mode does not required that you maintain a subscription. Subscriptions, (Basic or Advanced) however, are only available if you are running Pro mode. These subscription levels give a user access to the Package Library as well as higher priority email support. Most Pro customers maintain a subscription.
Excellent, thanks for the quick response.
On the first question again, is there a way to synchronize package installers between the different users then? I.e. if I create a custom deployment on my copy is there a way to give that custom deployment to another user on either the same system (term server) or a different system?
On the second question I guess I should ask what is the difference in http://www.adminarsenal.com/package-library-list between "Basic" and "Pro" then as there are a couple (but not many) that seem to have Pro but not Basic (i.e. 7-Zip, Imgburn)
If the other user is accessing PDQ Deploy on the same terminal server then that user would just need to refresh or restart his console to see the new packages.
There isn't a way to automatically sync packages from one Deploy console to another. At this point you'd need to do one or two things to make the new packages available.
Option One
1- Store the source files for your packages on a DFS namespace that is accessible to the other sites. If you have DFS replication working then the source files will get synced automatically to the other servers that are part of the DNS replication. For example, let's say that you have a DFS server called Main and a DFS namespace called DeployFiles. You have a server at each of 8 sites that are part of theDFS NameSpace and DFS Replication. Each server has a share called DeployFiles.
Main UNC
\\Main\DeployFiles - Your Install files would reference this path
Site servers
Server1\DeployFiles
Server2\DeployFiles
...
When PDQ Deploy is opened from Site One the UNC \\Main\DeployFiles would actually open \\Server1\DeployFiles
2- Export your package definitions. You can select a package (or packages) and export them (File > Export). This method will only create an XML file. It will not actually copy the source (install) files for the packages. You can then import this file into other PDQ Deploy consoles via File > Import. As long as the source files referenced in the packages can be accessed by the PDQ Deploy background service you should be OK.
Option Two
1- Copy the source files for the packages to the different PDQ Deploy consoles. For example, let's say you built a package called MyApp. You stored the Install (source) files for MyApp in your repository. By default your repository is under %PUBLIC%\Documents\Admin Arsenal\PDQ Deploy\Repository.
Your Install File would read something like $(Repository)\MyApp\setup.exe
As long as the files in the MyApp directory are copied to the other Repositories (for the other PDQ Deploy consoles) then you should be fine.
2- Export and Import the package definitions.
I was wondering how the licensing works, is it locked to an AD Username or email?
Let’s say a company owns 4 admin licenses.. And one of the admins leaves, how to they re-use that license? Would they have to contact Admin Arsenal to get a license file changed or something like that?
Hi Raymond, when you have four admin licenses those licenses would use the same key which states that the key has four user licenses. We do not tie it to AD accounts. When someone leaves you would only need to get a new key if they were the main technical contact. (The key will be generated based on a single email.
"Licenses are only needed by the administrators that use the software, so one person that uses it with different clients would still only need the one license."
How is this statement affected by the new Enterprise licencing model?
Enterprise - $500 per administrator/year (req's key + activation)
Is it still possible to activate the software on 10 different customer servers/domains? How does activation work?
A single user will be able to use multiple consoles, however the sharing feature of Enterprise is between users. So a single admin who has 10 different consoles will not be able to share the data between those 10 consoles. All other enterprise features will still be available.
And the new "activation" (in addition to the licence key) will not stop me from installing and using the software on multiple servers/domains? How does the "activation" work? How will it protect the product without interfering with that kind of usage?
Correct. The activation will not prevent you from installing and using PDQ on other computers. The activation ties a user to a console. A single user can be tied to multiple consoles, the only limitation as mentioned earlier (but worth repeating) is that users cannot share data with other consoles that are also activated by them. They can only share data with other activated users.
Good afternoon gents,
We are currently running 'PDQ Deploy 3.1.2 Pro Mode'. We renewed our license last week which we received and entered into Preferences-> License-> Enter a New License.
The "Upgrade Protection Expires" date correctly added another year, yet we continue to be prompted in the lower right hand corner that there is "A new license available".
Did we miss something? Thanks for any assistance.
Barry
Barry,
The link is referring to you having an Enterprise license for PDQ Deploy. Advanced subscriptions have been merged with licenses and are now called Enterprise. There's a different license key associated, and we didn't start e-mailing them out until shortly after you got your updated one.
An Enterprise license doesn't yet give you any additional functionality unless you have more than one user, but that will change in future releases. For now, though, you can put in the Enterprise license to make the link on the bottom go away. I'll have the new license sent to the technical contact on your account.
Thank you for such a prompt reply Adam. New key received and installed.
Barry
if we have pro. is it the full price if we upgrade to Enterprise?
just asking because my boss asked me to check first?
either way we are going to upgrade.
If you have purchased within the past year you can get a pro-rated upgrade. It will actually automatically apply if you log into your customer portal and get a quote for the upgrade. The portal can be reached here: https://secure.adminarsenal.com/Order/CustomerLogon
So from what I understand from the earlier posts here is that since I have 6 sites and I am the only Admin that uses Deploy and Inventory, I can install a console of both at each site and point the source files to a DFS, which we replicate nightly, I am guessing that means if I download from the library a new Adobe Flash update the update would be put into that source file on the DFS and each console after reoplication will show having that in the packages list, or am I misunderstanding what you meant Shane? We only have a single T1 at a few sites so this information would be very tasty to implement.
Jsamick wrote: "I am guessing that means if I download from the library a new Adobe Flash update the update would be put into that source file on the DFS and each console after replication will show having that in the packages list, or am I misunderstanding what you meant Shane?"
PDQ Deploy users can utilize Package Sharing and share packages with other users in their organization however this requires that each user have their own license. Since you only have one user (yourself) and multiple consoles this wouldn't work (since a user can't share packages with himself).
From what you mentioned it sounds like you can get what you want by only using one console. Since you have DFS set up you just need to make sure you have your Copy Mode set to Pull. (Preferences > Performance) When deployments are kicked off the target computers would pull the installation files from the DFS servers at their respective sites instead of having the files traverse the WAN for each deployment. This would significantly reduce the headaches that are involved with maintaining 6 different consoles for just one user.
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