Licensing Model
NCache Enterprise provides licensing based on two factors:
- RAM
- Logical Processors
NCache offers various plans based on the number combination of these two factors. For license calculation, please refer to Alachisoft pricing page or contact NCache sales team. NCache offers two types of licensing models:
1. Server Only Licensing
2. Client Server Licensing
These licensing schemes use Subscription based licensing model which is explained below later.
Server Only Licensing
In this type of licensing model, the number of licenses required is based on the number of logical processors and RAM of the server. You can connect unlimited clients to a purchased server, however the server needs to be activated with the activation key based on the plan the user has purchased.
Client Server Licensing
For this licensing model, the licenses are based on logical processors only and RAM is not considered. In this type of licensing, the client licenses also need to be purchased and the number of clients is mentioned at the time of activation. Each client connected consumes two licenses irrespective of the size or the number of logical processors of the client. For cases when the users scale down the application tier, they’ll stop a few instances of containers or cloud virtual machines. And when they scale back up, the new instances can possibly be run on a new hardware. Therefore, in this licensing model, cache servers issue licenses to clients when they connect to cache servers. Following information needs to be provided along with the activation of the cache servers.
Environment
Nodes participating in cache cluster must be activated with the same environment name e.g. Production, Staging, Testing etc. These environment names must be finalized at the time of purchasing licenses. License keys are issued for the environment names given by customer. Cache servers cannot be activated for environment names not associated with the license key.
Number of Client Licenses
Since in this licensing model, clients are not physically activated, cache servers issue the required number of licenses to clients at the time of initialization. Therefore, while activating cache servers, the number of client licenses that this cache server can issue are also specified. Whenever a new unlicensed client connects to this server, server issues it a license. One client consumes two licenses. A cache server cannot issue client licenses more than the number it is activated for. The number of client licenses can be increased or decreased based on the needs by reactivating cache servers with desired amount of client licenses. In one cache cluster, the number of client licenses provided must be the same for healthy communication.
Resizing an Activated Machine
For cases when the memory or core count increases resulting in the requirement of new licenses, a friendly warning will be logged for reactivation with increased number of licenses. If after a 15-day interval of logging the warning, reactivation does not take place, the caches stop working.
Subscription Based Licensing Model
NCache Subscription based licensing model requires to pay an annual fee by the customer for a specific period. The subscription can be purchased by the user for a time period of 1 year to the maximum of 5 years. The user can activate his license once the subscription is bought by the user. The license activation scheme is same for NCache server as well as client.
This subscription must be renewed at the end of the subscription period. Otherwise all the running caches will be stopped after a 30 day grace period post expiry provided by NCache.
For this, you have to reactivate your NCache License through PowerShell cmdlet Register-NCache for Windows or through activation script for Linux.