Administering licensing for the enterprise

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Administering licensing for the enterprise

To administer Windows Server 2003 operating system licensing for sites or the enterprise, use Licensing in Administrative Tools. You can track licensing data replicated to the site license server for sites or replicated to the primary domain controller for Windows NT 4.0 domains. For more information, see View licensing for a site and View licensing for a Windows NT 4.0 domain.

Licensing in Administrative Tools divides tasks into Purchase History, Products View, Clients, and Server Browser.

Purchase History: To view license purchases

The Purchase History tab in Licensing provides a historical overview of the licenses purchased for a site. It also shows the quantity of licenses purchased and deleted, the date of addition or deletion, and the name of the administrator who performed the action.

Products View: To view and manage product licensing

The Products View tab of Licensing provides licensing information for server products in a site. The information displayed for a server product depends on the licensing mode for the product.

For a product in Per Device or Per User mode, Product View shows how many licenses have been purchased for the product and how many licenses have been allocated to users or devices for all the products.

For Per Server mode, Product View shows the total number of licenses that have been purchased for each product on all the servers in the site. It also shows the maximum number of Per Server connections reached to the current date on all servers with the product in the site.

You can use both the numerical and graphical information shown in Products View to determine the following information about your licenses:

Symbol	Licensing status
	The product is in compliance with legal licensing requirements.
	The product is not in compliance with legal license requirements.
	The product has reached the legal limit, and you might want to purchase additional licenses.

In Products View, you can perform the following licensing tasks:

• Add new Client Access Licenses for a product

• Delete Client Access Licenses for a product

• View client accesses, purchase history, and server information for a product.

Clients: To view and manage client licensing

The Clients tab lists devices and users that have used the products in a domain or organization. For each device or user, it shows licensed and unlicensed usage of Windows Server 2003 operating systems. You can perform the following licensing tasks on this tab:

• View product usage by devices or users.

• Add new Client Access Licenses.

• Create, view, and edit license groups.

  Important

  • Each device or user in a license group requires a client access license.

• Revoke a license allocated to a device or user.

You can use both the numerical and graphical information shown in Clients to determine the following licensing status:

Symbol	Licensing status
	Users in compliance with legal licensing requirements (licensed usage).
	Users in violation of legal licensing requirements (unlicensed usage).

Server Browser: To view and manage server licensing

The Server Browser tab lists all the sites, domains, and servers in your organization. It shows the Windows Server 2003 operating systems installed on each server. You can use this tab to view and configure licensing for server products on servers in any site or domain for which you have administrative authority.

Use the Server Browser tab to view the licensing configuration of any server in the enterprise. You can perform any of the following administrative tasks at the server level:

• View Windows Server 2003 operating systems installed on a server.

• View the licensing mode for each product on a server.

• For products in Per Device or Per User licensing mode, view the number of Client Access Licenses purchased.

• For any server product in Per Device or Per User licensing mode, add or remove Client Access Licenses for a product.

• Open and manage a selected item's properties at the server and product levels.

• For any Windows server, view and change the time or frequency of licensing replication.

• For a computer running Windows NT 4.0 Server, view and change the location where licensing replication information is stored.

The properties for each server list all the Windows Server 2003 operating systems installed on the server. For each product, you can add or remove Per Server licenses or change the licensing mode. The properties for each product show the licensing mode and, if the product is in Per Server mode, the number of licenses.