To prevent the usage of Plesk licenses on multiple servers (which is against the Plesk End-User License Agreement), the algorithm for identifying such licenses was optimized from November 2020. As a result, from December 2020 onwards, mid-month, Plesk notifies Partners about which licenses from their inventory are used on multiple servers.
Note: If multi-use is established as having continued for more than 30 days, the corresponding license fee will be charged for each server that uses the same license.
Report Interpretation
The reports delivered to the billing addresses mid-month include a list of all licenses identified for multi-use at the moment when the check was performed.
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If the multi-use type corresponding to a license is marked as "confirmed", the situation has been ongoing for more than 30 days and will be correspondingly charged for, as described above.
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The licenses used on multiple servers for less than 30 days are marked as "potential" multi-use. They will not be charged, however, they are a warning.
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If no report is received, it means no multi-use licenses were detected for the respective account.
Note: If a license is used on multiple servers even for one single day, it already violates the Plesk End-User License Agreement. The 30 days established threshold was set to confirm license multi-use, as well as act as a buffer period to adjust the situation. 30 days is a sufficient time period for Plesk to confirm multi-use, as well as for partners to stop multi-use and/or to forewarn their customers about extra billing. However, mind that Plesk is constantly improving the frequency and accuracy of server reporting. That is why the duration of allowed multi-use, which is 30 days at the moment, can be changed at any time.
Note: Potential multi-use licenses should be checked in Partner Central > Manage Licenses > PLSK.01234567.0000 > Instances tab. Check how many servers are running this license and for how long (check IP address and last date columns). Actions should be taken to the licenses, which run on 2 or more servers simultaneously up to the date the check is done.
Note: Potential multiuse is counted for 42 days. Within these 42 days, it might be not simultaneous, but if more, than 1 server was used for more, than 5 days - it will be counted as potential multiuse.
Potential Solutions
If a partner was notified about the usage of licenses on multiple servers, the partner can undertake one of the following actions:
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Buy and install a separate license for each server. This is the recommended solution, and most reliable way to prevent potential multi-use from becoming confirmed.
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Terminate the license in question. The next server hit will remove the license from the server. This hit will be considered in the multi-use algorithm and multi-use status can still become "confirmed". However, if termination happens before license renewal for the next month, such cases will not be included in the billing report for further processing. So, if you decide to terminate the license in question, it should happen before the license update date. In this case, a partner can avoid billing even for confirmed multi-use in the current month.
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Set up auto IP binding, change IP binding behavior to "Lookup and restrict" or, if it is known exactly which server should use the license, bind to a specific IP address, and change IP binding behavior to "Lookup and restrict". Please note, that with the next update date, all servers with this license hit in KA. Requests from servers with a different IP than the bound one fail, but these hits will still be considered in violation of Plesk EULA. So, IP binding won’t help to avoid billing in the current month and likely next month too. However, IP binding helps to stop multi-use for further months. For more details about IP binding please refer to the dedicated article.
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Activate Machine ID Restriction. This new tool provides better protection against multi-use. You can enable it on your account in KA Partner Central:
- Go to your account settings
- Open the “Licenses” tab
- Enable the “Restrict by Machine ID” option.
- While this feature may not prevent billing issues in the current month, it will safeguard existing licenses further down the line as well as any newly acquired licenses. If you have any questions, please contact your sales representative.
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Contact end-user and bill for multi-use in advance.
For more details on this topic, partners should contact their assigned Sales representative or use the Contact form on the Plesk website.
FAQ
Click on a section to expand
A: The protection should work transparently for valid usage and shouldn’t cause an impact
A: No, no installation of additional software will be installed. The enablement is just the enablement of the protection mode.
A: Yes, the protection can be enabled/disabled on your own.
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