Introduction

Those of you familiar with previous versions of MetaFrame know how annoying adding licenses to your servers can be. Fortunately, the licensing process has continued to evolve, and with the latest release of MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, Citrix has made the most dramatic change in the licensing process thus far. MetaFrame Presentation 3.0 has centralized license management for the MetaFrame Access Suite by creating a stand-alone licensing server. The licensing server can be installed on any server with adequate resources and does not require a dedicated server. Management and monitoring of licenses has changed as well and can now be accessed via a Web-based management console that provides real-time usage information, historical usage information, and current license inventory.

In prior versions of MetaFrame, license information was stored in the IMA data store. In MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, Citrix moved licensing information to its own database and provided the means to back up the database to the network, or if your license server fails, you have the option of retrieving the license information from MyCitrix.com. Gone are the days of manually re-entering and activating licenses. In, fact, in the new licensing scheme, activation is no longer necessary. Instead of license activation, license files are downloaded from MyCitrix.com and placed on the license server.

If that were not enough, the new centralized license server can provide licenses across the network and between server farms, thus eliminating the need to design your farms around licensing. A single license server can manage and...