Multiple Windchill systems

[BenLoosli]

We have 2 Windchill systems, one for unclassified work and the other for classified work. When we upgraded our licenses a couple of years ago, we were told that the licenses can be used on both systems as Windchill is a named user system. I am setting up an upgrade on both sides to Windchill 12.1.2 so will be retrieving new licenses soon. With the new licensing is this still the way going forward?

[JGENTHNER]

Hello,
Thank you for your question. I believe you're asking about sharing the same allocation of licenses across multiple instances. If so, you will temporarily need to address the re-use with one of the following options since our new application was helping a number of our customers manage their allocations better.

Option 1: Go to each license host to assign at least 1 license for desired products. Then edit host info and enable the uncapped option for 180 days. We encourage labeling the host to reference "SHARED" or "REGISTERED USERS" and help us identify the use case.

Option 2: Setup a single Production licensing host with the full license allocation. Then clone additional hosts as Non-production, adding a “PROD” label to indicate production use.

In either setup, you must continue to track registered users across the instances and ensure that the number of users accessing the software does not exceed the amount purchased.

If you'd like assistance with the setup, you may continue to open cases with our Licensing Support team via My PTC Assistance and selecting the option for License Management.

[TomU]

It would be good for people to be aware of the risks and responsibilities with using an uncapped license.  PTC reserves the right to back charge for any license over usage and sending real-time license usage data back to PTC is required while the uncapped license is in use.  Companies need to be very careful if choosing to use an uncapped license.

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS328536

To use an uncapped license, your organization must agree to:   

• Remove the uncapped license file from your environment as soon as the transition is complete. 
• Ensure that you do not use more licenses than you have purchased while using the uncapped license. 
• Meet all terms and conditions of the license agreement. 
• Promptly pay for any usage above the number of purchased licenses.  

• Enable Windchill Performance Advisor, which will monitor license usage and transmit certain data to PTC as described in the data privacy policy at the link below. 

[JGENTHNER]

@TomU Thank you for sharing the caveats with the uncapped option. Users may find cloning or creating non-production hosts with the same allocation a better path, but either option requires continued monitoring of registered users.

For all, we're working on features that allow us to better assist sharing same allocations in Registered User configurations as well as to move hosts from non-production to production (or vice versa) classification.

[BenLoosli]

Uncapped license cannot be used on a classified system that has no internet access. 

I do not enable Windchill Performance Advisor on any of my Windchill systems.

None of my systems are cloned or rehosted. I build new systems for new releases of Windchill and import the old version of data.

[JGENTHNER]

Hi @BenLoosli

The cloning comment was to indicate the ability to quickly create a new host configuration with the same product allocation (device IDs and hostnames can still be customized to the instance). You are also able to create the host configuration from a blank or new host setup. Starting from new, the host should be setup as a Non-production host with a label such as 'PROD' or 'Production' so that you can identify to PTC that you are using as a Production instance. For Windchill and ThingWorx, you will not lose any functionality with the Non-production assignment. The temporary workaround this allows is to re-use the allocation numbers up to the amount purchased since Non-production is not counted in the allocation management.

For more on how to manage the version of software, please see Max's post on a parallel thread describing how to manage versions. We do allow you to generate the license files to support Windchill 12.0 or 12.1 as indicated in your post.