Renewing a license

When your license approaches expiration, you can renew it by adding a reserve key. This prevents the impairment of application functionality after the current license expires and before you activate the application under a new license.

The application activation task is used to add a reserve key on an SVM.

A reserve key cannot be added if you are using the application under subscription.

The type of reserve key must match the type of the previously added active key.

If you are using a licensing scheme that is based on the number of protected virtual machines, the type of reserve key must match the type of the guest operating system of the virtual machines: a server reserve key is intended for virtual machines with server operating systems; a desktop reserve key is intended for virtual machines with desktop operating systems.

If an SVM is used in a virtual infrastructure for the protection of virtual machines running server operating systems and desktop operating systems, it is recommended to add two reserve keys to the SVM: a server key and a desktop key.

If you use a licensing scheme based on the number of processors or processor cores, you need one reserve key with a limitation on the number of processors or processor cores, irrespective of the type of operating system installed on the virtual machines.

The reserve key must match the same license edition as the active key (standard license or enterprise license).

To renew a license:

1. Create an application activation task for the SVMs on which you want to add a reserve key. You can create a task for all SVMs, for the SVMs of one KSC cluster, or for an individual SVM.
2. Select the Use the license key as a reserve key check box at Step 2 of the task creation wizard.
3. Start the application activation task.

The task adds the reserve key on those SVMs in the KSC cluster on which the active key has already been added. The reserve key is automatically used as the active key after Kaspersky Security license expires.

If you use an activation code for application activations, at the expiry of the license the application automatically connects to Kaspersky activation servers in order to replace the active key that has expired. If the automatic connection of the application to Kaspersky activation servers ends with an error, you have to manually start the application activation task in order to renew the license to use Kaspersky Security.

The application activation task on an SVM completes with an error and the reserve key is not added if one of the following conditions is met:

• There is no active key on the SVM.
• A subscription key has been added as the active key.
• The type of reserve key being added does not match the type of the previously added active key.

If an SVM has an active key and a reserve key and you choose to replace the active key, Kaspersky Security checks the expiration date of the reserve key. If the reserve key expires before the previously renewed license term, Kaspersky Security automatically removes the reserve key. In this case, you can add a different reserve key after adding the active key.