KB9220: License Compliance Auditing in MicroStrategy

This document discusses how license compliance will be enforced at installation and run time in Strategy 9.x product family. Please consult the Knowledge Base document, KB7989: Licensing and product packaging in MicroStrategy  for further information on the licensing scheme.
 
The licensing scheme operates as follows:

1. Auditing named users for every component of the Strategy 9.4.x and newer
2. Increased notification when an out-of-compliance situation is detected.
   
• Level 1 (0-15 days)
• Level 2 (15-30 days)
• Level 3 (30+ days)
3. Hyper-threading technology is ignored when counting CPUs of Strategy Intelligence Server.
4. Auditing CPU usage of the Strategy Narrowcast Server delivery engine.

 
 
1. Auditing named users for every installed component of the Strategy 9.4.x and newer.
 
Whenever the system audit is performed, all the assigned privileges associated with the existing users will be checked against the available licenses granted per each installed component.
 
2. Increased notification when an out-of-compliance situation is detected.
 
Notification will be implemented through 3 different levels after an out-of-compliance situation is detected by the system. By default, the number of CPUs is counted when an Intelligence Server is started up. The number of users by product is counted using a daily scanning of the metadata at 23:59. This scan may be changed to any desired time (instead of the default time of 23:59) as described in KB7989.
 
For the first 15 days of being out-of-compliance, administrators will see a warning message when they log into Strategy Desktop and open the Administration folder. After the first 15 days, a warning message will be displayed to all end users of Strategy Web and Strategy Desktop. If the system is still out-of-compliance after 30 days, the products identified as out-of-compliance will have their privileges marked as unavailable in the User Editor in Strategy Desktop. At this point privileges cannot be added to users, user groups or security roles, taking the system further out of compliance. The implementation of the 3 levels is detailed below:
 
A. Level 1 (0-15 days)
The following warning message will be displayed to Administrators when accessing the server administration icon in Strategy Desktop:

"This is a notification that your Strategy implementation may be out of compliance with your software license agreement. The number of named users licensed for at least one product has been exceeded. In 'xx' days, end users will receive an out of compliance warning message."

This message will be displayed to Strategy Desktop users who open the Administration folder and to users who connect to a project source in Strategy Command Manager.
 
Customers should contact their Strategy Account Executive for purchasing additional licenses. Customers who believe that that the message is occurring due to an issue with the Strategy product, should contact Strategy Technical Support.
 
NOTE: The default security roles called "Normal User" and "Power User" should not be altered. These two roles will be reset to their default privileges upon upgrades so the system is liable to again become out of compliance when upgraded. Instead create a new Security role with the proper privileges enabled and assign that role to the appropriate users.
 
B. Level 2 (15-30 days)
The following warning message will be displayed to Administrators including an indication of the number of days until the next level takes effect:

"This is a notification that your Strategy implementation may be out of compliance with your software license agreement. The number of named users licensed for at least one product has been exceeded. In 'xx' days, the out of compliance privileges cannot be added to users, user groups or security roles."

 

The following warning message will be displayed to end users in Strategy Desktop and Strategy Web: 

"There are not enough <license_type> or <license_type>] licenses available. Please contact your system administrator to increase the licenses available in the system."

This is only a warning message and end users will be able to login as normal.
 
As stated in Level 1, customers should contact their Strategy Account Executive for purchasing additional licenses. Customers who believe that that the message is occurring due to an issue with the Strategy product, should contact Strategy Technical Support.
 
C. Level 3 (30+ days)
The following message will be displayed to Administrators:

"This is a notification that your Strategy implementation may be out of compliance with your software license agreement. The number of named users licensed for at least one product has been exceeded. The privileges associated with out of compliance products cannot be added to users, user groups or security roles."

The following warning message will be displayed to end users in Strategy Desktop and Strategy Web:

"There are not enough <license_type> or <license_type>] licenses available. Please contact your system administrator to increase the licenses available in the system."

 

The privileges for out-of-compliance products will be disabled ("grayed out") in the User Manager and Security Roles Editor.
 
As stated in Level 1, customers should contact their Strategy Account Executive for purchasing additional licenses. Customers who believe that that the message is occurring due to an issue with the Strategy product, should contact Strategy Technical Support.
 
Notes:

• The time interval for the levels cannot be reset by re-starting Strategy Intelligence Server or manually editing/deleting a file.
• The number of out-of-compliance days will not be reset when the system is fixed to be back in compliance. Rather, the number will be decremented for every day of in-compliance, until the count reaches 0.

 
3. Hyper-threading technology is ignored when counting CPUs of Strategy Intelligence Server.
The number of physical processors will be used when counting the number of CPUs, and not of the number of logical processors displayed by Intel's hyper-threading technology. Note that single logical CPUs may not be allocated across more than one physical CPU when defining processor affinity. For example, in a dual CPU machine utilizing hyper-threading, physical CPU 0 will have logical CPUs 0 and 1, and physical CPU 1 will have logical CPUs 2 and 3. If a single CPU of Intelligence Server has been licensed, logical CPU 0 cannot be assigned with logical CPU 2 or 3 but users can allocate logical CPUs 0 and 1 or logical CPUs 2 and 3.
 
4. Auditing CPU usage of the Strategy Narrowcast Server delivery engine.
CPU licenses for Narrowcast Server will be audited on both individual and clustered implementations. These checks take place on the delivery engine components, the Distribution Managers and Execution Engines. The primary Distribution Manager aggregates the number of CPUs used and will prevent Execution Engines from loading if they cause an out-of-compliance state. It will not prevent Execution Engines from being defined.
KB9220