Named User/VM Licensing

If an application such as Citrix Virtual Apps is hosted on a physical server, typically, you would have 100-200 users accessing each server. In this case, the server-based licensing options discussed above are ideal as the cost of the monitoring license is amortized across the users, thus reducing the total cost of monitoring. However, if the same application is virtualized, the number of users per server decreases; this in turn increases the monitoring license cost.  In such environments, the Named User/VM licensing option is more suitable.  This licensing option is applicable only to Thin Client and VDI environments, where you typically have only a few users accessing the servers at any given point in time. If this option is enabled, you can monitor any number of Citrix Virtual Apps servers, VMware Horizon RDS servers, Microsoft RDS servers, 2X Terminal servers, hypervisors hosting virtual desktops, AWS Workspaces, and/or cloud hosted desktops in your environment without any agent licenses, provided the total number of:

  • unique users who accessed any of the servers, virtual desktops (in the case of hypervisors hosting VDI), and cloud hosted desktops over the last 90 day period;

  • unique powered-on desktopsrunning on the hypervisor /cloud components to which no user has logged in during the last 90 days;

is within a licensed limit of named user/VM licenses.

Figure 1 : The LICENSE USAGE section of the License Information page displaying the usage details of the Named User/VM licenses

Every day, eG Enterprise computes the total count of unique users/VMs and stores this count in the eG backend. The solution then checks the values so stored in the last 14 days for violations. When performing this check, if the solution finds that the total number of unique users/VMs on any day during the last 14 days exceeds the licensed number of Named Users/VMs, then a license violation is registered.

If this license is violated in any 7 out of the last 14 days, the eG agents will stop executing the following tests:

  • The application-level tests mapped to the managed Citrix Virtual Apps servers, Microsoft Terminal, VMware Horizon RDS, and 2X Terminal servers;
  • All the inside-view tests of the VDI components (hypervisors hosting virtual desktops) and Cloud Desktop components;
  • A few outside-view tests of the VDI components

This implies that the host-level tests of these components will continue to run and report metrics.

Moreover, after the seventh violation (in 14 days), you will not be able to add/manage any additional thin client, VDI, or cloud desktop components (of the types mentioned previously). For every license violation that occurs in the last 14 days, eG sends mail alerts to the configured eG administrator mail ID regarding the license violation.

Figure 2 : Error that appears if the named user license limit is violated for the seventh time in 14 days