On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 7:11 AM, Dave Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

>
> Indeed i'm not sure then if i am entitled to the latest release although we
> have it installed on many other platforms. The issue i have is i don't
> handle purchasing or quoting and am just an engineer who
> designs,implements,supports stuff.
>

This is as much Symantec's fault as it is the industry's fault.  Most of us
are in the same position as you are but unfortunately we have an obligation
in our industry to follow the law, without any of us actually being lawyers
(nor do most of us have any desire to be lawyers).

Symantec could - and should - help us here.  They need to give us a
licensing tool that actually works and allow the techies to validate what's
installed against what's licensed and allow us an ability to get updated
licenses without going through major hurdles.  Ya know, when I install a
license, there should be a unique key that is tracked within Symantec.  When
I want to upgrade, I should be able to run something on my master that
generates a report of what I have, allow me to email/upload that to
Symantec, and have new license keys automatically generated and sent back to
me.   Symantec's back-end should be able to tell whether that unique key is
under maintenance or not.  Today, we're still running with some 3.4 license
keys and we've been trying for many years to get current licenses.  And
we're under maintenance!

The situation today from Symantec is that it is impossible to tell if you're
fully licensed for what you're running by looking at the system anywhere.
You'll see crap like "check the paper license to see how many you own".  Of
course, techies typically aren't allowed to keep the paper copies - that's
the job of a purchasing or licensing group.  Nor do we want to have to check
paper copies every time to count licenses either - that's what computers are
for!  There's no way to correlate virtual servers with physical servers
either.  There's no way to restrict a license to specific server.  If you
have 1 advanced client license for Windows, you can run advanced
functionality for all of the Windows systems since Windows installs the
client functionality by default (which of course is different from Unix
client installs!).

All told, NetBackup licensing is a royal mess and it's a horrendous chore
for admins to manage.

.../Ed

Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP, SCSE
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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