Question

Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Problem

Asked by: eymsIT

I have a Windows 2008 Terminal server which is part of a 2003 domain which was installed 116 days ago which has been running fine. I didn't licence it when it was installed and have been using the 120 day grace period. I licenced it today with per user setting and added 15 licences which was successful.
However when I look in Terminal Services Manager there is an exclamation sign against the server, and the first attached screenprint seems to say it is not in the Terminal services group in Ad, yet the second attachment seems to show that it is.
How do I resolve the error?

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Asked On
2009-04-03 at 08:58:18ID24292807
Tags

Microsoft Terminal Services 2008 licensing

Topics

Remote Desktop/Terminal Services

,

Windows Server 2008

,

Active Directory

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: page1985Posted on 2009-04-03 at 09:53:03ID: 24061990

What's happening here isn't related to the TSLicensing being listed in the directory.  The exclamation mark here is not correctible through settings.  You would have to uninstall TSLicensing, promote the server to a domain controller, and reinstall TSLicensing to make it change to a green check.  However, you can work around the issue (this method IS supported by Microsoft) by manually configuring your other terminal server to use it as a licensing server instead of autodetection.

Walkthrough

On your terminal server, perform the following steps:

  1. In Administrative Tools, expand Terminal Services and click Terminal Services Licensing. 
  2. Under Edit Settings, double-click License server discovery mode 
  3. Select your licensing method (I think you said Per User) 
  4. Select Use the specified license servers 
  5. Enter either an FQDN (host.domain.com) or IP address (whichever is accessible from the terminal server) for your licensing server. 
  6. Click OK 

 

by: eymsITPosted on 2009-04-03 at 13:22:33ID: 24063853

Thanks for the explanation.
The other server (buscall) is a Windows 2000 terminal server which I'm thinking of decommissioning very shortly, just leaving this (Sirius) Windows 2008 server as the only terminal server in the domain, which has the licensing server on.
Presumably in this scenario I would be safe to just do nothing?
Also, when looking in TS Manager at Sirius with the exclamation mark, under the 'Total TS Cals' column it says there are 15 cals, yet under the 'Available' column I would have expected to see 15 too, yet it just says 'generate report'. Is that because although I have added the 15 licences I still have 4 days left of the grace period and it is still handing out temporary licences?



 

by: page1985Posted on 2009-04-03 at 20:47:24ID: 24065847

No.  Your CAL count is unknown because you're licensing per user and not per device.  You can only get an accurate license count without querying active directory when you have per-device licensing.

 

by: eymsITPosted on 2009-04-07 at 09:05:32ID: 24088817

There are some licensing errors in the event log (see attached screenshots). I assume these are all related? How do I resolve?

 

by: page1985Posted on 2009-04-09 at 11:15:56ID: 24109934

For the first error (Event ID 4105) you can reslove by adding the machine account in Active Directory to the Terminal Server Licensing Servers group.  I believe it's located at:

     domain.com/Built-in/Terminal Server Licensing Servers

And for the second error (Event ID 1004) it's entirely possible that this is a side effect of the first error.  Let's correct the first error and see if this event recurrs.

 

by: eymsITPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:05:07ID: 24110946

I've checked our AD and the TS is a member in the builtin\terminal server licencing group already

 

by: eymsITPosted on 2009-04-20 at 06:59:20ID: 31566310

I appreciate your help on this one. The TS is up and running, although with still some niggles about licensing manager and AD. I may do some further digging and post another question to resolve outstanding stuff, but in the meantime thanks a lot.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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