Licensing

Niagara container deployment is tightly coupled to the Niagara Entitlement Server (licensing service). The container has to reach out to the Entitlement Server at least once a day to re-authenticate and to receive the authentication token to continue running.

Traditional Niagara licensing uses a unique and permanent Host ID as a key to license. Containers are inherently portable and intended to operate in a variety of virtualized environments. Containers include a single hard-coded Host ID and node-locked license with an expiration date. A separate Host ID and thus container image is required for each license variant.

The Entitlement Server provides an online service to monitor and distribute licenses. While each container will be assigned a uniquely generated identity, the central Entitlement Server can detect abuses such as trying to reuse the same identity. Since a license must be periodically renewed, the opportunity for abuse is limited. In addition, the risk of abuse is mitigated by the following:

Contractual auditing of units is deployed.
Providing a unique container variant to customer.
Each license has an expiration date.