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What is Active Directory Licensing?

Thomas Schempp
  • Updated

axes4 provides Active Directory licensing for organizations that operate an in-house Windows Active Directory (AD).

Active Directory licensing allows axes4 products to be licensed without any communication to axes4 servers.

The clients running an axes4 product must be a member of an Active Directory domain. Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is not compatible; we provide separate Entra ID licensing for this.

Operating principle

The program folder of the axes4 license manager contains a Json file which contains the following information, among other things:

  • SID of the AD domain (hashed)
  • Name of an AD group that contains the licensed users
  • Number of licensed users
  • Expiration date of the license

The file has the naming scheme LicenseToken_...json..

axes4 products periodically check the following points:

  1. Is the current user a member of a domain whose SID matches the SID in the license file?
  2. Is the current user a member of the AD group listed in the license file?
  3. Is the number of users in the AD group less than or equal to the number of users in the license?
  4. Is the current date within the validity period of the license?

If all four conditions are met, our axes4 products are activated – otherwise they run in demo mode.

How to proceed using axesWord as an example

  • The organization purchases a license for Active Directory licensing from axes4.
  • The admin creates a new AD group (example: “axesWord Users”) and adds the domain users who use axesWord to this group.
  • The admin provides axes4 with information about their domain, receives a license token file and distributes it to the clients that use axesWord via Group Policy.
  • The admin ad justs the registry value for the license manager on the clients via Group Policy.

Important notes

  • The name of the AD group cannot be changed after the license has been issued. We recommend setting up a new AD group with a name that cannot be changed.
  • The number of licenses cannot be reduced after the license has been issued. (However, it is possible to increase the number of licenses.)
  • The SID of the AD domain cannot be changed after the license has been issued (which is not a problem in practice).

Compatibility

Active Directory Licensing is compatible with all original versions of Windows Active Directory as well as with products that implement the full AD protocol stack (e.g., Univention UCS).