What Are Aggregate Licenses?

Prior to the 8.5.0 release, multiple licenses of the same feature-version combined with each other in either an exclusive or additive way. With the 8.5.0 release, a third property to govern the combination of licenses has been introduced, known as Aggregate Licenses. With aggregate licenses, multiple license strings can be combined to create an aggregated hard and soft limit, yet the start and expiry dates of the individual license strings are maintained in an independent manner.

For two or more licenses to be aggregated certain license rules need to be followed. This is explained in the following table.

>License properties that must be same - The license properties marked must be same for aggregate licenses.

>License properties that can be different - The license properties marked can be different for aggregate licenses.

NOTE If these rules are not maintained, aggregate licenses will be treated the same as exclusive licenses.

License Property	Rules Governing License Aggregation
standalone_flag: >Network >Standalone >Repository
licType: >Normal >Trial	Normal only For trial licenses, the exclusive\additive\aggregate property does not matter because each trial license is treated individually.
Capacity license (capacity_flag): >Capacity or Non-capacity >If capacity, pooled or non-pooled
License Manager redundancy (num_servers): >Redundant >Non-redundant	The majority rule setting must be the same for all licenses—enabled or disabled.
Feature name (feature_name)
Feature version (feature_version)
License combining property (additive): >Exclusive >Additive >Aggregate	Aggregate only
code_type: >Long >Short-numeric	Long only
License locking mode for network licenses: >Client locked >Server locked >Client server locked >Unlocked
For server locking for network licenses: >Server locking criteria >The number of redundant License Managers >Locking codes
License locking for standalone licenses: >Client locking criteria >Locking codes
Local-request locking criteria (local_request_lockcrit_flags) and information
Sharing criteria (sharing_crit) and sharing limit
Holding criteria (holding_crit), unit (key_hold_units), and holdtime (key_holdtime)
Lifetime unit (key_life_units) and value (key_lifetime)
Number of challenge-response secrets (num_secrets) and secret strings (secrets)
Clock tampering flag (clock_tamper_flag) enabled or disabled
VM flag (vm_detection) enabled or disabled
Number of instances (keys_per_node)
Public (plain_vendor_info) and private (vendor_info) vendor information
Commuter license flag (enabled or disabled) and maximum commuter check out day (if enabled)
Grace period flag (enabled or disabled) and grace period (if enabled)
Log encryption flag (enabled or disabled) and level (if enabled)
Number of subnets (num_subnets) and subnet information (site_lic_info)
Signing key index
For client locking of network licenses: >Client locking criteria >Locking code	If client locking codes are used in aggregate licenses, then the client locking information defined within various licenses will be appended. A client which matches the locking information defined in any of the individual licenses will be entitled to use the aggregated license.
License start (birth_day, birth_month, and birth_year)	A token which will be issued to an application will always hold the earliest start date and the latest expiry date (end date) defined within all of the combined licenses.
License end (death_day, death_month, and death_year)
Hard limit (num_keys)	The cumulative hard limit of aggregate licenses must not exceed the maximum limit (i.e. 4,294,967,294). This high value is applicable only when the hard limit is used as a quantity. Additionally, each individual license will have an impact on the overall License Manager performance. For example, a single license with a hard limit of 2,000,000 will have a smaller performance impact than 50 licenses each with a hard limit of 40,000.
Soft limit (soft_limit)
License Output Format (out_lic_type): >Encrypted License Code >Concise Readable License Code >Expanded Readable License Code
License vendor information (license_vendor_info)	This field is applicable from license version 19 onward. Vendor information entered in this field can be similar or different across participating licenses.

NOTE The licenses of different vendors cannot be aggregated.