Enterprise staging 11.4 license

[ModyBuchbinder]

In Enterprise 11.3 and before when you had staging license and the same people works with the production and staging you could copy the Enterprise license (json file) and use it on staging Enterprise too.

In 11.4 you must give a full machine name when you create Enterprise json license.

Now you can not use the same file for production and staging.

What is the solution? MyEsri does not let you create Staging json even if you have staging Enterprise. It does give you separate server license.

Thanks 

[MichaelVolz]

I would like to know the answer to this question as well when I am ready to upgrade to 11.4.

[KaitlynStevens]

Hi @ModyBuchbinder,

You may use the same Portal license file for your production and staging environments.

When you create a license file, the organization URL ties the ArcGIS Pro, Drone2Map and ArcGIS All Source licenses to your Enterprise portal organization. The production license file, containing the portal URL for the production organization, can be imported into both the production and lower environments. The license file imported into the lower environment will work as per usual, except it cannot be set as the licensing portal to authorize ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Drone2Map or ArcGIS AllSource, and you will see logs informing you of the portal URL mismatch.

Note that you will only be able to set the production environment as the named user licensing portal to authorize ArcGIS Pro (D2M or AllSource). However, after authorizing Pro using the production environment, you can still add the lower environment to the list of portals in ArcGIS Pro and sign in to consume and publish content.

Hope this helps!

Kait

[ModyBuchbinder]

Hi Kait

Your answer is correct for 11.3 when no machine details need to be in the file if you only have Creator and Viewer.

In 11.4 there is no license manager any more. All your license (include Creators and Viewers) are depend on the full machine name that is embedded in the json file.

This file cannot used at all on a different machine

[KaitlynStevens]

Hi Mody,

I think I see where your confusion stems from.

As you're likely aware, a Creator, Professional (previously GIS Professional Standard) or Professional Plus (previously GIS Professional Advanced) user type must be provisioned for the initial administrator account. 

At 11.3 and earlier versions, the ArcGIS License Manager administers licenses for ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Drone2Map and ArcGIS AllSource. If you are not authorizing any of these applications as an add-on license or through a user type (GIS Professional Basic, GIS Professional Standard or GIS Professional Advanced), the License Management step during the provisioning process is skipped altogether; you don't need to provide a unique identifier (MAC address or Cloud Instance ID). This is likely your experience if you are provisioning only Creators (for the initial admin account) and Viewers.

The important distinguishing factor here is that at 11.4, the Creator user type now includes an ArcGIS Pro Basic license. The Professional and Professional Plus user types (previously GIS Professional Standard and GIS Professional Advanced) include ArcGIS Pro Standard and Advanced licenses, respectively. Therefore, any user type chosen for your initial administrator account will include a license for ArcGIS Pro. In other words, an ArcGIS Pro Basic license at a minimum will always be included in your license file beginning at 11.4, since the Creator user type now includes this license.

To be clear, this does not prevent you from using the production license file in a lower environment. This does prevent you from authorizing Pro (D2M or AllSource) through a named user in the lower environment where the organization URL does not match what the license file has stored. 

Hopefully this helps to clear things up.

[ModyBuchbinder]

Hi Kait

Let me see if I understand you.

What you say is that if I create a json license file for Enterprise with hostname xyz.com  I can use it on machine abc.com and I will still have creator license (without the Pro access).

Correct?

[simoxu]

There must be a way to prevent people from licensing ArcGIS Pro from the staging environment.

The mechanism in ArcGIS 11.3 and previous version was the LM which was used to license ArcGIS Pro and normally was registered in the production portal, and working together to provide the named-user ArcGIS Pro licensing.

With the release of 11.4, some user types come with ArcGIS Pro licenses, and LM is not required for ArcGIS Enterprise to provide named-user licenses, which means ArcGIS Pro named user license is provided purely via Portal license， will that double the number of Pro license the client have paid for if the same portal license can be used for a lower environment？ 

It will be great to get some clarifications on this, before moving to 11.4.

[MarleyGeddes]

Hi, 

Jumping in here to answer some of these questions while my colleague Kaitlyn is offline for the American Thanksgiving holiday.

@ModyBuchbinder - your understanding is correct. The ArcGIS Enterprise portal URL specified when generating the Portal for ArcGIS 11.4 license file is only used to authorize access to ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Drone2Map and ArcGIS AllSource using named user licensing. This is used to 'lock' these licenses  to one environment and replaces the requirement for a separate and dedicated ArcGIS License Manager in older ArcGIS Enterprise versions.  You can import a license file that was generated with the URL organization1.domain1.com/portal1 into a portal with URL organization2.domain2.com/portal2 and it will functional normally except your members will not be able to sign into ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Drone2Map or ArcGIS AllSource when the respective apps are authorized using named user licensing.

@simoxu - It is only possible to enter one ArcGIS Enterprise portal URL when provisioning a Portal for ArcGIS 11.4 license file. Although the license file can be imported into both a lower level environment (i.e. Staging) and your production environment, only the ArcGIS Enterprise organization with the matching URL to the one specified in your license file can be configured as the named user licensing portal with ArcGIS Pro. As such, you will not be able to authorize ArcGIS Pro through both the Staging and Production environments using the same license file. 

Please let us know if you have any more questions!

Thanks,
Marley

[simoxu]

Thanks @MarleyGeddes for the clarification, that makes lots of sense now 🙂