Regarding Sharing Windchill Licenses

[NP_10570407]

Hi All,

2 business divisions within my customer company currently using single/same Windchill instance.

Now one of the business division has planned to get a separate Windchill instance, independent of current Windchill instance.

I want to understand on how licensing works ,

1. Can the current Windchill instance license be shared with new windchill instance? Is there any possibility?

2. Or, a new set of licenses need to be purchased?

3. How the license server is handled in both above scenarios?

Thanks in advance

Regards,

Narendra

[Rocket_Max]

Hello, If two departments are using the same Windchill server (including the database), then I believe it is not possible to use two sets of licenses, as the licenses are generated through the server's ID, refer to https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS277240

-Rocket

[avillanueva]

@Rocket_Max provided a great resource. If the new instance is for Dev or Test, I think it should be possible to use same license but they will have different server ids. You need a difference license file for each one. If the new instance say is for a SCIF and that set of users also has licenses assigned to them in the current instance, here too I think that is ok to do. The process is the same to provide that server ID and generate a license file. However, if that new instance is for a unique set of users different from the current instance, then no. You will likely need to plus up licenses to handle that server. They can opt for a new license order or increase license and allocate between the two.  If you think about it in the extreme, if you had 100 users, you could not have 1 server for each and only pay for 1 license for all of them. Licenses generally are named user (except for active daily model) so each user should be covered.

[BenLoosli]

I have 2 Windchill instances running on separate networks with no data connection between them. I use the same license information on both instances. The licenses are assigned to each server independently. Since Windchill is a named user license system, a user cannot be using 2 systems at the same time. They may be logged in, but only doing work on one. I try to keep the named users with the same licenses on both systems, but with one system still running 11.1, it is a little harder. We are upgrading that system to 12.0.2 in November and then both Windchills will be the same with the same licenses modules. I do have a third Windchill 12 test system, but I am the only one who uses it unless I need a user to check something for me.

[HelesicPetr · Accepted solution]

Hi @NP_10570407 

If nothing changed then you can have many servers as you want. 

The license is named so one user can use his license on any Windchill server that is owned by the organization.

One our customer uses many windchill instances because is a subcontractor for many companies so one instance is for one customer.

Each instance use different creo version and also different naming rules based on customer because many customers uses different systems and software versions. 

I has been informed that PTC said it is OK because user can work just in one time in one system that is logical if the user does not have a clone himself 😄

PetrH. 

[jbailey]

That is not necessarily true depending on the T's & C's. I work at a federal agency that has multiple Windchill instances, and even though we have an enterprise contract, each site requires its own unique licenses, and if a user has multiple accounts at other locations, they need a license at both locations.

[HelesicPetr]

Hi @jbailey 

if your federal agency owned two different companies that have Windchill instances yes each company needs own license to Windchill even though there is one employee. 

If one company wants to use two instances for same user, then it is possible with a named license. 

PS> additional agreement can change anything 😄  

PetrH

[jbailey]

So Licenses cannot shared between Windchill instances, as each instance is a "Site" where licenses are allocated by system ID. The licensing mechanism is built into the web application. That being said, in the license management portal you can allocate a certain number of each license to a specific host, which would allow you to use that set of licenses so support two production instances on one buy.  So if the company has 200 licenses, and Division A needs 80 and Division B needs 110, then you should be good. Please note, if there are users that need to access both, they need a license for each production instance.

That being said, what is the use case for different instances? You could set up multiple Orgs in the single instance, and each org could have its own policies, administrators, vaulting, attributes, subtypes etc.

The only caveat is things that have to be customized at the site level will affect everyone... Like security labels, UI customizations, Site level policies / preferences etc

[BenLoosli]

When we went to Windchill 11.1, we purchased additional subscriptions since the original licenses we owned did not agree with the number of users in the DS. One of our questions to PTC sales was how do we handle multiple Windchill instances. In our case each instance is hosted on a separate server pair. We were told that a license with all allocated users could be installed on each instance. So I have 30 base licenses on each server, with names assigned to the licenses. Since that 1 name can only be using 1 of the 2 systems at a time, we are only using 1 license while that user does his work. 

We are buying a Windchill license for that named user and they can use it on any of our Windchill systems. We do not need to buy 2 licenses for them.

[TomU]

To be clear, it doesn't matter if the same user can access the different systems at the same time or not.  You could have 100 windchill servers and the same user logged into all 100 of these systems simultaneously, and that user still only requires one license (as long as these systems are all part of the same organization.)

It's NOT okay to attempt to use the same license for same person who is doing work for different organizations. A user is not uniquely global (anywhere on earth), they are only unique within an organization.  If the same person is working as a subcontractor for two different organizations, each organization must have their own separate license for that same physical person.

[TomU]

All licenses available in the allocation table can be assigned to every Windchill instance.  There is no limit on the number of Windchill instances a company can install, and all users can exist on every instance.  It's the customer's responsibility to make sure the same license is not assigned to two different individuals within the same organization.  This is clearly stated in the licensing basis agreement (unless the organization has some other legal document that supersedes the normal agreement.)

https://www.ptc.com/-/media/Files/PDFs/legal-agreements/licensing-basis-table/PLM/licensing-basis-document-plm-5-10-2023-en.pdf

Article - CS277468 - FAQ : Licensing for Windchill (ptc.com)