Unicentre product License expired on VMS platform

[Sk Noorul Hassan]

Hi,
We had loaded Unicentre products in our VAX/VMS servers. Now, we are getting license expire messages in operator log for the product code 1IXA “Unicenter TNG Event Manager”. What should we do to for this ? Do we need to purchase new license or we can reload the same license. Please guide.

[Ian Miller.]

From the 9th Jan 2007 edition of the OpenVMS.Org Newsletter.
=========================

CA UNICENTER PRODUCT LICENCING ISSUE


Unicenter for OpenVMS and Enterprise Edition products
running on OpenVMS VAX and Alpha may have an issue after
January 3rd, 2007.

Unicenter for OpenVMS and Enterprise Edition products that
are running with a version of CA Licensing older than
V1.57 may start displaying out-of-compliance messages
after January 3rd, 2007,however the product will continue
to run.

The CA Enterprise Edition V2.4 products known as
AdviseIT,WatchIT, ScheduleIT and CommandIT are affected
only if they are not properly licensed. If you have any of
these products installed on your systems, you should
examine the contents of the following file to verify the
existence of valid license keys for any V2.4 Enterprise
Edition products installed on the system:

SYS$SPECIFIC:[CA_LIC]CA.OLF

It should be noted that the end-of-support date for V2.4
of the Enterprise Edition products has passed and that
systems running these versions should be upgraded to the
current, supported version.

How to determine if your systems are affected:

To determine if any of your systems are affected and if
the licensing update should be installed, perform the
following:

$ ANALYZE/IMAGE/INTERACTIVE SYS$SHARE:CALIC$SHR.EXE

Press Return until the section titled "Image
Identification Information" is displayed. Examine the
field labeled "Image File Identification:". If this field
has a value that includes the string "V2.0" or is of the
form "162-yyyymmdd-xx", then no further action is
necessary.

Solution:
Elimination of the out-of-compliance messages requires
that the latest version of CA Licensing for OpenVMS be
downloaded from:

http://supportconnectw.ca.com/public/reglic/downloads/licensepatch.asp#alp

Click the OpenVMS link to access the page from where the
licensing update kit may be downloaded.

Here is a pointer to the Corp Announcement

http://supportconnectw.ca.com/public/ca_common_docs/lic_expire.asp

[Sk Noorul Hassan]

Many thanks.

I am getting image file identification : "115-20020214-2" - Does it mean that, there is no need of loading the license again.

[Hoff]

Beyond what was posted...

If you have valid CA license(s) for your product(s) and the licensed CA product(s) continue working to your satisfaction, then I'd keep going with the product(s). I'd ignore this event from the event manager.

If you should need support for the CA product or should the CA product stop working, that's an issue you'll want to address with CA or with whomever is providing support for the products. Most vendors do have version requirements.

Should you be uncertain about the status of your CA product(s) or should you wish to have CA do something to cause this event to cease, I'd encourage you to ask the vendor directly -- assuming that the necessary details and support information is not already posted on the CA website or in the CA equivalent of ITRC. Or ring up CA and ask. (I'm almost certain they'll encourage an upgrade, if you are not current.)

[Thomas Ritter]

Sk., we too are suffering from CA licensing problems. We have also found watchdog has been failing since January. Except nothing but a complete fix from CA. We have been burnt by CA licensing problems in the past. We have procedures which look for the existence of sys$specific:[ca_lic]lic98.log files. These files will list licensing problems. They can be deleted and will be automatically re-created to write licensing problem records.

Suggest: install the so called new fix, but test completely in a non-production environment. Ending on a positive note, if you do have a failure and log a severity 1 problem with CA the responds is very very quick.

[Peter Zeiszler]

PIPE ANALYZE/IMAGE/header SYS$SHARE:CALIC$SHR.EXE | sea sys$input identification

From your response you show "152-xxxxxx-x". So it appears you will need this latest license patch.

On the plus side I did this patch on all of our systems - starting with test systems first. I had no problems getting this installed and no more license expire messages.

[Arch_Muthiah]

Sk,

We have a security product which will identify this Unicenter TNG Event Manager license problem and report to the customer.

I have received so many customer complaints on this, we usually suggest the customer to update their license by contacting or email or FTP-ing the license request file to ca'.


Archunan

[Sk Noorul Hassan]

Hi all,

I recieved the patch to load onto my production servers.

Do I need to stop application before loading the patch on VMS?

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

>>>Do I need to stop application before loading the patch on VMS?<<<

Unless and until the CA-provided information with the license patch indicates otherwise, I certainly would look to cleanly shut down my critical applications, shut down the CA application(s) involved, and then apply the CA patch, and then restart the CA packages and then restart the applications.

You might well get away with a hot-patch, but -- unless CA indicates that would work -- I'd tend to be more conservative with a production environment. Others have mentioned off-line testing, and that too can be an appropriate prerequisite. With off-line testing, you might be able to assure yourself that a hot-patch and the patch itself would work in your environment, for instance.

Members of the (free) HP DSPP program can get (free) access to the ability to generate vendor-specific license PAKs, something which means that a vendor can use the existing and familiar OpenVMS LMF mechanisms to control and to manage software licensing. It's odd that CA has not availed itself of the LMF PAKGEN program, as that can ease the product documentation efforts for OpenVMS systems, among other benefits.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs

[Sk Noorul Hassan]

Thanks