5.3

Table Of Contents
vFabric Suite Licensing 19
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4. vFabric Suite Licensing
vFabric Suite Standard and vFabric Suite Advanced packages are licensed on a per-machine and average-usage basis. This
chapter explains how vFabric Suite licensing works.
Subtopics
vFabric Licensing Terminology
How Licensing Works
Check the Validity of an Existing License Key
vFabric Suite Licensing Terminology
To understand vFabric licensing, review the related terminology:
license key. vFabric Suite production licensing requires a license key. The license key represents the licenses (also known
as license units) that you have purchased, whether one or multiple licenses. A license key is an alphanumeric sequence
of 25 characters that encodes details of the associated product, the license expiration date, the license capacity, and other
information.
license unit. A license unit is a single vFabric Suite license.
machine. The definition of a machine depends on the infrastructure environment in which you are installing vFabric Suite:
In an Amazon EC2 environment, a machine is an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
In a VMware vSphere environment, a machine is a virtual machine (VM).
In a physical computer environment, a machine is the central processing unit (CPU).
processing unit.The definition of a processing unit depends on the infrastructure environment in which you are installing
vFabric Suite:
In an Amazon EC2 environment, a processing unit is an EC2 compute unit (ECU).
In a VMware vSphere environment, a processing unit is a virtual central processing unit (vCPU).
In a physical computer, a processing unit is an internal processor core.
Cross-Cloud pricing. Cross-cloud pricing refers to the ability to license vFabric Suite Standard or Advanced across virtual,
cloud, and physical infrastructure.
How vFabric Suite Licensing Works
What type of licensing you get and how you activate it depends on whether you purchased your vFabric product(s) standalone or
as part of a vFabric Suite package (Standard or Advanced).
Licensing for vFabric Suite
vFabric Suite Standard and vFabric Suite Advanced packages are licensed on a per-machine and average-usage basis.
Each licensed machine can run any or all vFabric software components. Thus licensing is tied to machines, rather than to
component installations. One license unit covers one machine with a maximum of two processing units. For example, in the
Amazon EC2 environment, if you plan to install one or more vFabric components on a single Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
configured with up to two EC2 compute units (ECU), you need only one vFabric license unit for that AMI. However, if the AMI
is configured with four ECUs, then you need two vFabric license units for that AMI.