SmartBear-ID Based Licenses

Important Notice for VirtServer Customers: ReadyAPI has moved to SmartBear License Management. From September 2023, all licenses issued for your subscription term will be ID-based licenses by default. If you are not currently on ID-based licensing, it's time to migrate immediately. File-based licensing will no longer be supported as of October 2023. This means that technical support requests related to file-based licensing will not be accommodated. If you encounter technical issues that you're unable to resolve, it could lead to service interruption. For customers still in the process of migration, we recommend reaching out to your Account Manager to discuss your migration plan. Alternatively, you can log a support request with our Customer Care Team for assistance.

SmartBear ID-based licenses are a new license type that we started using in ReadyAPI 3.8.1 and will now be available for use in VirtServer 3.16. This is a part of the SmartBear's move to a fully proprietary license model. File-based licenses will no longer work in VirtServer from October 2023.

Basics

• To activate and use the product, your company needs to purchase a VirtServer license or have a trial license assigned. A license administrator needs to specify a SmartBear identifier (an email and a password). If you don’t have it, you need to create one.

• From VirtServer 3.16, we include support for ID-based licenses which are hosted on your on-premise license server only. Once the license has been made available on manage.smartbear.com, your license administrator needs to convert that license for on-premise use and install the license on an on-premise license server. Once installed, the license administrator should provide the VirtServer admin with the server address.

• If authentication is required to request licenses from the on-premise ID-based license server, the VirtServer admin will also need to access the on-premise license portal and get the access key for the license. Once the VirtServer Admininstrator has the on-premise license server address and access key, license installation can proceed in the VirtServer product.

• From VirtServer 3.17.0, we include support for ID-based licenses hosted on SmartBear license servers. Once the license has been made available on https://manage.smartbear.com/ and your license administrator has assigned it to the VirtServer administrator, VirtServer administrator needs to login to their https://manage.smartbear.com/ account and get their access key. This is then used in requesting and installling a license in VirtServer.

• The number of allowed concurrent product instances is set by your license.

Requirements

ID based licenses are online and on-premises licenses.

Online licenses are those that are controlled by the SmartBear license servers available on the Web.

On-premises licenses are those that work in private networks, which have no connection to the Web and SmartBear license servers.

By default, the licenses you purchase are online ones. You can convert them to on-premises licenses and vice versa on the SmartBear License Management.

Currently, all the control over license use is performed by the SmartBear License Servers available 24×7. The computer where you are running VirtServer must have permanent access to these servers. That is, the proxies and firewalls running in your network should allow connection to them:

• https://manage.smartbear.com:443
• https://api.slm.manage.smartbear.com:443
• https://login.slm.manage.smartbear.com:443
• https://server.manage.smartbear.com:443
• https://server.slm.manage.smartbear.com:443
• https://profile.id.smartbear.com:443
• https://profile-api.id.smartbear.com:443
• https://auth.id.smartbear.com:443

This access is needed both at the product start and during the product runtime. The addresses are for API servers and don’t have a user interface visible in browsers. When products call these hosts, they add some specific paths or URLs to the addresses.

In case a network glitch happens, VirtServer is smart enough to understand the cause and to remain functioning long enough to let your system administrators fix the issue.

For on-premises licenses, your license administrator can convert your subscription license to an on-premises one and activate this license on the On-Premises License Server in your network.

From October 2023, file-based licensing will no longer be available and will be fully replaced by SmartBear ID-based licensing - Please contact your SmartBear Account Manager immediately to understand the steps involved in transitioning and getting started. Click here to learn more.

Managing licenses

You can manage your SmartBear ID and licenses on our License Management Portal:

License priority for ID based License Requests

A single user may be assigned multiple ID-based licenses for a specific product. If that happens, a license will be selected based on the following:

1. A license already in use has a higher priority than a free one — e.g. you are requesting to use a license on a computer that already has one checked out.

2. A Commercial license has a higher priority than a Trial license.

3. An older license has a higher priority than a newer license.

More info on licenses

For complete information on the SmartBear ID-based licenses, see our License Management Documentation.

Please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information on SLM.

Need assistance?

If you have questions or need assistance with the new licenses, please contact our Customer Care Team.