Activate your SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license

Activating your SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license is easy and the process works just like activating other SolarWinds Platform products with one beneficial difference: SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted licenses can take advantage of flexible licensing (more information below) to activate multiple SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted installations with a single SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license - you no longer need a separate license for each server.

Online activation

To activate your license on a server which is connected to the Internet, follow these steps after installing SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted or swapping your module license for a SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license.

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.

2. Scroll down and click License Manager in the Details section.

3. Select SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and click Activate.

4. Enter the activation key.

5. Enter the number of nodes you want to activate for this installation. If you want to use all the nodes in the license key, select All available.

6. Fill in your information and click Activate.

7. When you return to the license manager, you will see the activated license key with the appropriate number of nodes.

You can find your license activation key for SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted by logging into the SolarWinds Customer Portal and clicking Licenses > Manage Licenses. If you do not know your SolarWinds Customer ID and password or individual profile details, contact Customer Support and submit a ticket.

Offline activation

If your deployment is not connected to the Internet, complete the following steps:

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, copy the machine ID.

   1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.

   2. Scroll down and click License Manager in the Details section.

   3. In License Manager, select a SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license and click Activate. This starts the Activate License wizard.

   4. Copy the Machine ID and click Next.

      If the last 16 characters of the machine ID are zeros, you have not selected the product to activate the license for. Cancel the wizard and try again.

        Watch this video: Troubleshoot incorrect Machine ID

      Transcript

      

2. Get the .LIC file.

   If you are evaluating SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, give the machine ID to a SolarWinds representative to obtain a .LIC file and upload the file in the License Manager.

   1. Log in to the Customer Portal, and click Licenses > Manage Licenses.

   2. Find your Observability license.

   3. Click Activate License Manually.

   4. Enter the required information, including the Machine ID from you clipboard.

   5. Click Generate License File.

   6. Download the .LIC file.

3. Return to the License Manager and upload the .LIC file.

4. On Upload License Key, click Choose File, select the .LIC file, and click Open.

5. Click Action to complete activation.

   Your license is now activated, and the license details are displayed in the License Manager.

For more information about activating licenses for SolarWinds Platform products, see Activate licenses for SolarWinds Platform products.

Swap a module license with SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted

Follow these steps to deactivate your module license, switch to Observability, and activate the new license.

If you switch to SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted licensing, your current module licenses are saved in the background, and you can easily switch back to them. See Evaluate SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted

Activating and using more features may increase the system requirements for your SolarWinds Platform installation.

Deactivate the On-Premises License online

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.

2. Scroll down and click License Manager in the Details section.

3. In License Manager, find the license you want to deactivate.

   Consider backing up the license key so that you can reuse it later. The license key is the chain of 32 characters in groups of 4, displayed next to your license.

4. Click Deactivate.

   The license is deactivated and ready for reuse.

Deactivate the On-Premises License offline

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.

   If your server is offline, append offline to the end of your instance URL.

2. Scroll down and click License Manager in the Details section.

3. In License Manager, select the product you want to deactivate.

4. Click Deactivate. This downloads the Deactivation Receipt file.

   The deactivated license enters a grace period, and all functionality remains available until you activate the new license or the grace period expires (6 hours by default).

5. Go to the Customer Portal.

6. Locate the product you want to deactivate manually.

7. Click Deactivate License Manually.

8. Click Browse, select the deactivation receipt, and click Upload.

Evaluate Observability

If you haven't evaluated SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted yet, start a free trial. The 30-day trial period cannot be paused or interrupted and will expire at the given date. For more details, see Evaluate SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.

Activate the Observability License

• Online activation

• Offline activation

Flexible licensing for SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted

Flexible licensing is a feature available only for SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted licenses. With flexible licensing, you can think of your SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license as a pool of nodes that you can activate wholly on one server or partially on multiple servers, all with a single SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license.

Learn more about the SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted licensing model.

Activate nodes for any number of servers

Each time you install SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and activate your SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license, you can enter the number of nodes you want to activate for the server. If your license still has any unused nodes, you can then use the same license key to activate more nodes for a different server. Reallocate nodes at any time by deactivating the license for an installation and reactivating those nodes on the same or a different server.

Viewing all your activations

You can see a list of all activations and deactivations for your SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license, including the server name and the user who performed the action, at any time:

1. Log into the Customer Portal and click Licenses > Manage Licenses.

2. Find your license and click View install history.

Grace period

When you deactivate a license offline, your SolarWinds Platform deployment enters a license grace period. During the grace period, all functionality remains available as if the deactivated license were still active, so you have time to upload the deactivation receipt to the Customer Portal, generate a new license file, and activate the license without interrupting monitoring.

The grace period is a SolarWinds Platform-level licensing protection mechanism. During an active grace period, lease distribution is suppressed, and the system preserves the current effective licensing state across all servers until activation completes or the grace period expires.

The grace period applies to all commercial licenses, including SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and module licenses. It starts automatically; you do not need to enable it.

When the grace period starts

• Offline deactivation: The grace period starts when you deactivate a license offline. Before you confirm the deactivation, the Deactivate dialog shows the date and time when the grace period ends.

• Update of the number of nodes for a SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license: When you change the number of nodes activated for an SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted license online, the license is deactivated and reactivated with the new quantity in the background. If the reactivation fails, the grace period keeps your deployment running until the license is successfully activated or the grace period expires.

Expired licenses do not enter the grace period. If you deactivate a license that is past its expiration date, the license is deactivated immediately.

Check the grace period status

While the grace period is active:

• Administrators see the License grace period active until banner, with the date and time when the grace period ends, at the top of SolarWinds Platform Web Console pages. Click the banner to open the License Grace Period Active! dialog, which lists the deactivated licenses. Click Activate License in the dialog to go to the Customer Portal.

• In License Manager, deactivated licenses are displayed with the Grace Period license type.

• Grace period events (started, stopped, expired, and duration changed) are recorded as audit events, including the user who performed the action and the affected licenses.

End the grace period

The grace period ends when one of the following happens:

• You activate the last license that was deactivated during the grace period, or you activate a license for another product.

• You click Activate & end grace period in License Manager and confirm.

• The grace period duration expires. The default duration is 6 hours.

• The SolarWinds Orion Module Engine service restarts, for example, when you restart services or restart the server. The grace period state is not saved, so restarting services ends the grace period immediately.

• A HA failover occurs. See Grace period in HA environments.

When the grace period ends, licenses that you have not reactivated are deactivated. Data collection for the affected products stops, and only historical data is available.

Deactivate and activate multiple licenses during the grace period

You can deactivate several licenses offline, one at a time or together. All deactivated licenses stay in the same grace period.

If you activate one of several deactivated licenses while the grace period is active, the license is not applied immediately. License Manager marks it as Staged for activation, and the license is applied when the grace period ends automatically or when you manually end it. Grace period ends automatically when you activate the last remaining license that was deactivated during the grace period.

When you have activated all the licenses you want to keep, apply the staged licenses and end the grace period:

1. In License Manager, click Activate & end grace period.

2. Review the confirmation dialog, and confirm.

   Licenses staged for activation are activated. The grace period ends for all remaining deactivated licenses, and these licenses are permanently deactivated and removed from the list.

You cannot undo this action. Before you end the grace period, make sure you have activated every license you want to keep.

Grace period in secured or air-gapped environments

If your environment has restricted access, manual approval processes, or air-gapped licensing workflows, the standard 6-hour grace period may be insufficient for completing the offline deactivation-to-reactivation cycle.

If you anticipate that reactivation will take longer than the available grace window, proactively coordinate with your SolarWinds licensing team before starting the deactivation process. Plan your offline steps to complete within the 6-hour maximum grace window, as the grace period cannot be extended beyond this duration.

Grace period in HA environments

A HA failover restarts services, which ends the grace period. If you deactivate a license offline that is assigned to an active HA pool, the Deactivate dialog displays a warning that the grace period will stop if a failover occurs during the deactivation cycle.

Before you deactivate a license assigned to an active HA pool, plan the offline deactivation and reactivation for a maintenance window when a failover is unlikely. Keep this timing in mind when estimating how long the grace period needs to remain active.