I would use my current pro licence to spin up a second server for testing. But please, do read carefully: I wrote “if I need a second pro…” I do my testing with the GPL version.
How many of those are bugs versus feature requests ? Feature requests are very subjective and may not be added to the project as they maybe of use to overall project. To date with the latest version of virtualmin everything works as expected what bugs are you seeing?
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We don’t track whether a server is live or for testing, and honestly, we prefer it that way—it’s better for everyone to collect as little data as possible.
That said, to address your issue, make sure to use your test server with the same Pro license only for the allowed grace period. The license server takes exactly 48 hours to release the lock, so effectively, the grace period is 21 days minus 48 hours.
To be clear, the license server provides a 21-day grace period for testing or migration. During this time, both servers will work normally using the same Pro license. After the grace period ends, even though your system services (like websites and databases) won’t be affected, Virtualmin itself will switch to “read-only” mode on both systems (live and test). It won’t be possible to make changes in Virtualmin, but the rest of your system will keep running as before. This soft-lock is way too gentle but we want to keep it user-friendly after all!
Expired licenses need to be renewed within a 7-day grace period, following the same rules as above.
After weeks of testing, I’m pretty sure license management works perfectly fine. However, for the upcoming Virtualmin 7.30.3 release, we’re improving how host id is generated, which will potentially prevent false-positive alerts about license overuse on systems with multiple NICs.
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@Ilia thanks for the clarification, i will downgrade my test server.
I’ve historically said a license could be used on a second non-production server (for development, testing, and in the distant past I also said a hot-spare/backup server was fine, as long as it wasn’t in production use…so not a load balanced server, just a backup, but there are better ways to handle a backup system today, that wouldn’t be phoning home, like regular snapshot backups), so, maybe we could make only one of the servers go into read-only mode, if there are two? Though how we’d choose which goes read only, would be more complexity, and I guess it doesn’t really solve the problem of providing a development/testing server. But, none of our competitors offer anything like that, so maybe it’s just not something that makes sense, especially since we already give away a version that can mostly take the place of Pro for development/testing (the API is mostly identical, just without reseller accounts and some other bits).
Also, 30 days was always our grace period in the past, for server migrations, etc. Is that really a big deal such that we need to change it to 21?
Regardless, if we’re changing policies on stuff like that, we should communicate it in a news announcement and give folks a little time to figure out what changes they want to make to their deployments. We shouldn’t surprise folks with a 21 day countdown, with no warning. Some of the multiple-server license deployments are legitimate according to what I’ve said about them in the past. Maybe I was dumb for thinking we could have a squishy policy like that, that’s so easy to abuse (and it definitely has been abused), but I don’t think the folks who’re using the license in a way I’ve said in the past was OK should have to drop everything to make rushed changes or decisions.
Some will be able to downgrade to GPL, easily and without it effecting their usage (like OPs DNS server). Some might need to make changes about how they’re doing things, consolidating stuff that needs Pro features onto one server, and downgrading the secondary, I dunno. Hopefully, nothing critical is running on the “extra” Pro system, though, as that would be a violation of the old policy, too. It was never intended for hosting active sites in production. It was always, “We’re not going to police this closely, because you might be migrating, you might be doing development/testing, whatever.” If your second install found its way onto a critical system, I guess this is just a more insistent reminder that that’s not the intention of the policy, old or new.
Things are tough all over, and my inclination is always to give as much value as we possibly can. But, the reality is my inclinations haven’t built a business that works, so we probably need to listen to me less on business decisions. There are some things I won’t budge on (and Ilia and I have hashed those out a few times in private and will continue to do), but, I have to admit I’ve made plenty of mistakes regarding the money side of the business over the years.
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You need to do what is good for the company, you need to make money so this should be your starting point.
I can downgrade my second server to GPL as it is not doing any live stuff, just testing.
People should not be using the same license on several production servers anyway.
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They are many things thank could be added as part of pro and I have mentioned many things that would make the virtualmin more attractive to use it and then of course pay for pro.
We discussed this in a group chat, I thought. In short, the decision to set a 21-day grace period was based on it being the maximum period we should allow without reaching the billing cycle. A grace period as long as the billing cycle itself wouldn’t make sense.
The warning is a very clear way to communicate the change. Since not everyone uses the forum, I made sure to keep it as clear and explanatory as possible on the “Virtualmin License Manager” page, and in alert message itself.
I’ve historically said a license could be used on a second non-production server (for development, testing, and in the distant past I also said a hot-spare/backup server was fine, as long as it wasn’t in production use
I don’t believe we’ve discussed this before… Nevertheless, the risk of abuse from such a policy could easily outweigh the number of genuine development systems we meant to support.
So, maybe we could make only one of the servers go into read-only mode, if there are two?
Well, there’s no simple way to do it.
I will update FAQ page to mention the change.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the GPL can still host websites right? It just doesn’t have as you said the resellers stuff and “some other bits”. SInce I don’t think I have ever used the GPL myself, is there a place I can look at a comparison between the two? I have a reseller setup on the one server for myself and one of the colleagues that also has most of the virtual websites on that box, but I don’t think he has ever utilized it at all. I might be able to do just fine with one of mine dropping to GPL to serve the sites that I have for myself and don’t get any money for if it will still do that much and also continue to use it for testing sites before migrating them to the Pro server. That would the the last thing here is will they migrate easily after being setup on a GPL server to the Pro server?
Yes, hosting websites is the purpose of both GPL and Pro.
And, yes, you can move between Pro and GPL systems via backups, and you can downgrade a Pro system using the virtualmin downgrade-license command.
Pro has more features and more installable web applications, as well as reseller accounts for managing multiple virtual servers with a single account. A regular virtual server account can also create new websites, they will just all be owned by the same user (a virtual server can create Sub-servers, which are virtual servers owned by an existing Virtual Server and living in a subdirectory of the owners home directory…e.g. /home/example/domains/sub-server/).
Yes, it’s available on the www.virtualmin.com/shop page.
There are plenty of features missing in the GPL version, but it should still be more than fine for one of the testing systems.
You could always go and buy a WHCMS lifetime licence only to be told … sorry we have cancelled that go and pay a a few thousand a year … then you might have something to complain about.
Nothing to be WHAT about here mate … I would suggest thanking them for giving you a free version to downgrade to.
Joe, do NOT go back an ignore anything … People can put up with the nag screen … its not like it stops working.
100% … got my vote
For everyone’s reference, we have documented it here.
Please take a look!
My opinion is that I really don’t understand the reason for the change, I understand that the change has been made because it is suspected that more licenses could be sold by controlling this, I really don’t think anyone saves on something that is public facing and is part of their business, either you have it or you don’t…
On the other hand, in my case it affects me and quite a lot, because I am in the middle of a server migration, I have a license of 100 domains, and between the two servers I have 56 domains, so my opinion is that if you cross and export data from our servers out, at least check that the sum of those two servers does not exceed what is really acquired.
I also see very normal to have a second test server, to verify that the proposed changes do not give problems, it is as simple as instead of controlling the servers with the same license, control the sum of domains of these two servers with the same license, for testing you have 3 or 4 domains at most.
It’s no problem for us to provide you with extra time for migration purposes, and in the future, we’ll have a feature to handle this using the same license.
As Joe explained in the linked thread above, we don’t have the facility for this and intentionally avoid collecting any user data.
I also see very normal to have a second test server, to verify that the proposed changes do not give problems
The GPL version is perfectly suited for this.
Yes, I am confident with you and I know that you have always made my job easier, it is not a criticism, it is an opinion.
The GPL option is fine, but for our environment is not the same, if I for example want to test if the nextcloud update of a domain is going to fail or not, with the GPL I can not do it, it is not the same.
I really still think that the best thing would be to add the domains available on both servers, or leave a second server option with 10% of the licenses contracted for example, only for testing or training purposes.
Please don’t and if you implement, provide an option to opt-out. I love the minimal data collection approach and I would hate to see the devs going in the wrong direction.
I respect your opinion but frankly I do not understand it because they obviously know the licenses you have purchased and at the data level are already accessing and sending the information of your license number, the option to prevent them from sending this data would be to block access to their ips in your firewall.