Virtualization Manager Licensing Model
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is licensed according to the number of CPU sockets per monitored host. When you monitor a virtual host, VMAN collects metrics and data for all children VMs. If you try to monitor more sockets than your license allows, you will not be able to add more data sources or apply VMAN upgrades.
Orion Platform products support both perpetual licenses and subscription licenses. See License types in the Orion Platform documentation for details.
VMAN includes two licenses:
- Primary license to be used in the Orion Web Console for VMAN in the Orion Platform.
- Secondary license to be used for legacy VMAN installations with the legacy VMAN appliance (the VMAN appliance is not needed after VMAN 8.0).
See Virtualization Manager Primary and Secondary licenses for more information.
VMAN is available in the following license sizes:
| License Tier | Sockets |
|---|---|
| VMS8 | 8 |
| VMS16 | 16 |
| VMS32 | 32 |
|
VMS64 |
64 |
| VMS112 | 112 |
| VMS192 | 192 |
| VMS320 | 320 |
| VMS480 | 480 |
| VMS640 | 640 |
| VMS800 | 800 |
| VMS1120 | 1120 |
| VMS1440 | 1440 |
| VMS1680 | 1680 |
| VMS1920 | 1920 |
| VMS2400 | 2400 |
| VMS3040 | 3040 |
| VMS3840 | 3840 |
| VMS4800 | 4800 |
Get your license key
You can obtain the primary and secondary license keys through the Customer Portal.
- Log in to the SolarWinds Customer Portal.
- Select Licenses > Manage Licenses.
- Locate an unregistered Virtualization Manager activation key. Make note of the license key.
Add primary license to VMAN in the Orion Platform
- Log into the Orion Web Console.
- Click Settings > All Settings, and click License Manager.
- In the License Manager, click Add/Upgrade License.
- Enter the Activation Key and Registration Information for the VMAN primary license, and click Activate.
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance online
You will add the secondary license key on the VMAN appliance using the VMAN console. These instructions walk through adding the license online.
- Log in to the VMAN console.
- Click the Setup tab and select License Information.
- Click Activate License.
- Enter the secondary license key.
- In the Computer Name field, enter localhost.
- Enter the other required information, and click Send Activation Request.
Add a secondary license key for the VMAN appliance offline
You will add the secondary license key on the VMAN appliance using the VMAN console. These instructions walk through adding the license offline.
- Log in to the VMAN console.
- Click the Setup tab and select License Information.
- Click Unique Machine ID, copy the machine ID, and save it on a flash device.
- From a computer with Internet access, log in to the SolarWinds Customer Portal.
- Click Licenses > Manage Licenses, and locate an unregistered Virtualization Manager activation key.
- Click Manually Register License, and enter the required information.
- In the Computer Name field, enter localhost.
- In the Unique Machine ID field, paste the machine ID copied from VMAN.
- Click Generate License File, and download the license file.
- Transfer the license file to a computer with access to VMAN.
- Click Upload License File, select the license file, and click Open.
Exclude hosts from monitoring
If there are not enough SolarWinds Virtualization Manager licenses to cover every powered on virtual machine managed by a vCenter server, change the access permissions of the vCenter user account to limit what it can access.
Restricting the virtual machines accessible by the user account reduces the number of virtual machines or sockets SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can collect data from. This way you can control which virtual machines are being monitored.
You can control access permissions in the VMware client by assigning the No Access role to the vCenter account for the hosts and virtual machines you want to restrict.