AlphaVM-Pro has two license checking mechanisms used in production mode. One is based on a USB dongle; the other is based on the binding to the host system. In evaluation mode a network based license is used, which relies on connection to the EmuVM’s license server.
The dongle licensing mechanism relies on the presence of a USB dongle, which is shipped when the product is purchased. The dongle contains all the information about the license limits of the corresponding purchase. The dongle can be updated remotely by a program sent by EmuVM . The dongle vendor is KEYLOK.
When running on VMware it is often inconvenient to use a dongle. For this case there is a licensing scheme that binds to the ID of the VMware appliance and to the MAC addresses of all the VMwaere VM NICs. This scheme limits possibilities for cloning the system and running the clones in the same network environment. After this license is created, the VMware VM configuration cannot be changed (with respect to the NICs and the system ID). With this scheme the VMware instance can be moved to various VMware nodes and the licensing keeps working because it binds to the VMware instance and not to the particular host hardware.
A single AlphaVM license allows to run a single AlphaVM instance at a time. It is possible to have multiple configurations but only one of them can run at a time with a given license.
The licensing mechanism limits the number of CPUs in the system, the CPU server type (that determines the CPU performance: basic, JIT1, JIT2, and JIT3) and the RAM memory size. The peripheral devices are currently not limited by the license. Any supported number of SCSI Controllers, tapes, disks and network controllers can be used.