AWS License Manager is a service that allows you to centrally manage your software licenses from software vendors (such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, and IBM) across AWS and your on-premises environments. This gives you control and visibility into how your licenses are being used, allowing you to limit licensing overages and reduce the risk of non-compliance and misreporting.
In this blog, we will be discussing the amazon license manager
- What is an AWS License Manager?
- How it works
- Features
- Benefits
- License rules
- Resource Inventory
- License type conversions
- Security
- Pricing
What is AWS License Manager?
AWS License Manager generates personalized licensing rules based on the terms of its licensing agreements. Administrators can use these rules to help prevent licensing violations, such as using more licenses than are specified in an agreement. AWS License Manager also makes it easier to manage software licenses that require Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts. Administrators can specify their Dedicated Host management preferences for host allocation and host capacity utilization.
Once configured, AWS License Manager handles these administrative tasks on your behalf, allowing you to launch instances as easily as you would an EC2 instance with AWS-provided licenses. Along with the check-out time, AWS License Manager also keeps track of the end-user identification and, if available, the underlying resource identifier for each check-out.
Any software that is licensed based on virtual cores (vCPUs), physical cores, sockets, or the number of machines can be tracked using License Manager. This includes a wide range of software from Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Oracle, and other vendors.
How does License Manager work?
AWS license Manager allows you to pool knowledge from various domains. Most importantly, it integrates natively with AWS services, such as the Amazon EC2 control plane, where instances are created and deleted. This means that rules and limits capture business and operational knowledge, as well as automate controls on instance creation and application deployment.
The diagram below depicts the distinct but coordinated responsibilities of license administrators (who manage permissions and configure License Manager) and users (who create, manage, and delete resources via the Amazon EC2 console).
Features-
1. Set license terms as rules- You can use it to enable a centralized team within your organization to manage software licensing agreements and create rules. These rules can then be used to govern license usage throughout the organization.
2. License tracking enforcement- When a new EC2 instance is launched, the rules are attached via the console, CLI, or API.
3. Limit non-compliance proactively- These limits are evaluated during instance launches or when attaching licensing rules to existing instances. When license usage exceeds soft limits, it sends Amazon Simple Notification Service notifications to license administrators and end users.
4. Automate discovery of existing licenses- AWS License Manager provides a mechanism for AWS Systems Manager to discover software running on existing EC2 instances automatically.
5. Switch Licenses easily- Customers can switch from AWS-provided licenses (license included) to bring-your-own-license (BYOL) with their licensed media and take advantage of their existing investments, or from BYOL to purchasing license included from AWS to benefit from a flexible pay-as-you-go licensing model.
6. Centralize license management and reporting- This simplifies the management of incremental licensing purchases, compliance, and vendor audits throughout your organization.
7. Automate management tasks for Dedicated Host licenses.– AWS License Manager allows administrators to specify Dedicated Host management preferences for host allocation and host capacity utilization to simplify the management of licenses that require Dedicated Hosts.
8. Use managed entitlements to track licenses across multiple organizations- Administrators can use managed entitlements to distribute, activate, and track third-party software purchased from AWS Marketplace across multiple AWS accounts for end users and workloads.
9. Built-in AWS integration- License administrators can create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use across all of their AWS accounts by adding rules to the AWS Service Catalog.
10. Leverage dashboard to track usage- AWS License Manager allows you to track licenses used across AWS and on-premises environments from a single dashboard. You can easily view license allocations, consumption, and alerts that require your attention.
Benefits-
1. Gain control over license usage- AWS License Manager centralizes license usage, giving organizations greater visibility and control over how software licenses are used and allowing them to prevent misuse before it occurs.
2. Reduce costs- Administrators can determine the correct number of licenses required and avoid purchasing more licenses than necessary. AWS License Manager is simple to use and can help you save time and money when tracking and managing requests.
3. Reduce the risk of non-compliance- AWS License Manager also reduces the risk of noncompliance by providing independent software vendors (ISV) with a centralized AWS account and built-in controls to ensure that only approved users and workloads consume licenses.
License rules in License Manager:
1. Once the license configuration rules are in place, they can be linked to the appropriate launch mechanisms, where they can directly prevent the deployment of non-compliant new resources.
2. Users in your organization can easily launch EC2 instances from designated AMIs, and administrators can track license inventory using the built-in License Manager dashboard.
3. From the time rules are attached to an instance until its termination, license tracking is active. You set your usage limits and licensing rules, and License Manager keeps track of deployments while alerting you to rule violations.
4. When a tracked server is stopped or terminated, the license associated with it is released and returned to the pool of available licenses.
Resource inventory in License Manager:
- Using the Systems Manager inventory, License Manager enables you to discover on-premises applications and then attach licensing rules to them. After attaching licensing rules to these servers, you can track them in the License Manager dashboard alongside your AWS servers.
- The License Manager, on the other hand, cannot validate licensing rules for these servers at the time of launch or termination. You must periodically refresh the inventory information in the License Manager console to keep information about non-AWS servers up to date.
- If your organization does not prohibit AWS users from creating AMI-derived instances of installing additional software on running instances, resource inventory tracking is also useful. License Manager provides a mechanism for quickly discovering these instances and applications through inventory search.
License type conversions in License Manager:
License type conversion allows you to optimize your license inventory for the following scenarios:
- Migrate from on-premises workloads to Amazon EC2-
You can deploy your workload to Amazon EC2 and use AWS-provided licenses during your migration. When the migration is finished, use the License Manager license type conversion to change the license type of your instances to BYOL so you can use the licenses released during the migration.
- Continue running workloads with expired license agreements-
If your Microsoft license agreement is about to expire and you do not intend to renew it, you can switch from BYOL to AWS-provided licenses using License Manager license type conversion. This switch allows you a flexible pay-as-you-go licensing model.
- Optimize costs-
Because BYOL may require a longer-term commitment, AWS-provided licenses (license included) instances may be more cost-effective for small or irregular workloads. To reduce licensing costs, you can use License Manager license type conversion to convert your instances to license included.
Security-
1. At AWS, cloud security is of the utmost importance. As an AWS customer, you have access to a data center and network architecture designed to meet the needs of the most secure organizations.
2. AWS and you share responsibility for security. The shared responsibility model defines this as cloud security and cloud security:
- Cloud security – AWS is in charge of protecting the infrastructure that runs AWS services in the AWS Cloud. AWS also offers services that can be used securely. As part of the AWS Compliance Programs, third-party auditors regularly test and verify our security’s effectiveness.
- Cloud security – The AWS service that you use determines your responsibility. Other factors, such as the sensitivity of your data, your company’s requirements, and applicable laws and regulations, are also your responsibility.
Pricing-
- AWS License Manager has no additional costs. You pay for the AWS resources (such as EC2 instances) that you use to run your application. There are no minimum fees or upfront commitments; you only pay for what you use, as you use it.
- If these applications require more resources than the default environment provides, customers will be charged at the standard AWS rates for the additional resources consumed by the application.
- Pay-as-you-go enables you to easily adapt to changing business needs without overcommitting budgets, while also improving your responsiveness to changes.
- With AWS, you can get volume discounts and save a lot of money as your usage grows. AWS also provides you with options for acquiring services that will assist you in meeting your business needs.
![Pricing]()
Frequently Asked Questions-
Frequently Asked Questions-Q1: Which AWS services are supported through AWS License Manager?
Ans: AWS License Manager is compatible with Amazon EC2, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Marketplace, and AWS Systems Manager (includes support for on-premises environments and AWS cloud).
Q2: What types of software licenses can I track using AWS License Manager?
Ans: AWS license Manager enables you to keep track of software licenses based on virtual cores (vCPUs), physical cores, sockets, or multiple instances. This includes a wide range of software products from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and SAP, among others.
Q3: As an administrator, can I use managed entitlements to manage software licenses on AWS and on-premises deployments?
Ans: You can extend license management across both AWS cloud accounts and on-premises environments when you purchase licenses from participating independent software vendors (ISVs) in AWS Marketplace. You can purchase software licenses through AWS Marketplace and then use managed entitlements to manage distribution and track entitlements.
Q4: Which automation tasks can be performed by AWS License Manager?
Ans: It uses AWS Systems Manager to discover software running on existing EC2 instances automatically. The licenses can then be tracked using the central dashboard after rules are attached and validated in EC2 instances.
Related Links/References
- AWS Free Tier Limits
- AWS Free Tier Account Details
- How to create a free tier account in AWS
- AWS Free Tier Account Services
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