Set license terms as rules

With License Manager, you can designate a centralized team in your organization to manage software licensing agreements and create rules. These rules can then be used across the organization to govern license usage.

License tracking

When a new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance gets launched, the rules created with License Manager are designed to be attached using the console, CLI, or API. Once rules are attached, end users in your organization are enabled to launch instances, which are designed to be tracked from dashboards in the License Manager console. Licenses and usage can be tracked throughout the lifecycle of an instance.  License Manager is also designed to track any violation of the licensing rules and send an alert to end users and license administrators. When an instance is stopped, licenses are designed to be released and available for reuse.

Non-compliance

You can set hard or soft limits to control license usage and help prevent the launch of a new, non-compliant instance. A hard limit is designed to block the launch of an out-of-compliance instance. A soft limit is designed to permit out-of-compliance launches but is designed to send an alert when one occurs. License Manager is designed to evaluate these limits during instance launches or while attaching licensing rules to existing instances. When license usage exceeds soft limits, License Manager is designed to send notifications to license administrators and end users. For hard limits, License Manager is designed to block new instances from being launched.

Existing licenses

License Manager is designed to provide a mechanism to discover software running on existing EC2 instances. Rules can then be attached and validated in EC2 instances, and the licenses can be tracked using License Manager’s central dashboard.

If users uninstall software purchased on AWS Marketplace, License Manager is designed to recognize that uninstall and make the license available for reuse.

Administrators can also use tags to help track and manage licenses across their AWS and on-premises environments. These tags can help identify whether a resource belongs to a dev/test or production environment, or a designated business unit.

Switch licenses

You can change license type of EC2 instances for some server workloads. You can also switch from BYOL to purchasing license included from AWS. You can change the license type associated with your instance to make the switch and retain the application, instance, and networking configuration associated with the workload.

Centralized view

License Manager is designed to provide a centralized view of license usage across AWS and on-premises environments based on your licensing rules.

Managed entitlements to

License Manager managed entitlements are designed to help administrators distribute, activate, and track third-party software procured in AWS Marketplace across multiple AWS accounts for end users and workloads. License Manager managed entitlements are also designed with controls to help independent software vendors (ISVs) and administrators assign licenses to approved users and workloads.

Track usage

With License Manager, you can track licenses used across AWS and on-premises environments from a central dashboard. You can view license allocations, consumption, and alerts that need your action.

Additional Information

For additional information about service controls, security features and functionalities, including, as applicable, information about storing, retrieving, modifying, restricting, and deleting data, please see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/index.html. This additional information does not form part of the Documentation for purposes of the AWS Customer Agreement available at http://aws.amazon.com/agreement, or other agreement between you and AWS governing your use of AWS’s services.