Licensing of Sparqube products for SharePoint

Sparqube product licensing model is designed to give you flexibility and control over the usage of the desired product. You can plan and define the requirements for your environment during evaluation period and buy the license which will cover your specific needs. When you buy the license you should know what product edition and type you want to use, how many activations should the license support and how many SharePoint web front-ends should the license cover.

Below licensing model options are described in detail:

• License Type – defines behavior of product license. There are three license types: Trial, Development and Full.
  • Trial – time-limited license which gives an ability to check all the available features of the product but in limited time frame. For SharePoint products this time frame is 30 days. Please note that evaluation period is started from the moment license is activated and not from the moment the license was issued. Trial license can be activated only once and on the farm with no more than three web-frontends. If you need custom or extended trial license please contact Sparqube sales department. Trial licenses are free and can be generated on product Download page.
  • Full – time-unlimited license usually used in release environments.
  • Developer – time-unlimited license used during development phase. The only difference from Full license is the presence of visual element indicating that the license is the Development license. Such licenses are cheaper than Full licenses.
• Maximum Web Front-Ends – license usage is limited by number of web front-ends (WFE) installed in your farm. Server is considered a web front-end if it is running Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application service. Maximum Web Front-Ends license attribute specifies maximum quantity of farm WFEs with which Sparqube licensed product will work. In majority of cases (standalone farm with single WFE) support of 1 web front-end is enough. But if SharePoint environment is designed for large user base with several web front-ends, corresponding Max. Web Front-Ends count should be specified during license purchase. Default option suggested during purchase is 1 Maximum Web Front-End, but, of course, it can be increased if desired. In case of gradual increase of web front-ends count over time, additional licenses can be purchased to increase Maximum Web Front-Ends count. However, please keep in mind that 1 license with Max. WFEs set to 3 is significantly cheaper than 3 licenses with Max. WFEs set to 1.
• Maximum Activations – license has to be activated via License Manager. Activation procedure bounds license to SharePoint farm on which Sparqube product is installed. License has limited number of activations available. Number of Activations license attribute specifies on how many SharePoint farms you can activate and use certain license. This is particularly useful when you plan to use the license on several farms installed and running, for example Development farm, QA farm and Release farm. This way you do not need to purchase three separate licenses but purchase only one license with Max. Activations attribute set to 3. This is more feasible since 1 license with 3 Max. Activations is cheaper than 3 separate licenses with 1 Max. Activation.
  Important: please keep in mind that license cannot be deactivated (unbound from farm) and/or transferred to another farm, so be careful choosing on which farm license is activated. License key can be activated on other farms if and only if Maximum Activations attribute value greater than 1 was specified during license purchase.

Licensing workflow:

1. User obtains Full or Developer license key via purchase or Trial license key via product Download web page
2. License key is sent via e-mail and looks similar to the following:
   A1B2C3D-E4F5G6H-I7J8K9L-M1N2O3P
3. License key is entered and activated for corresponding product using License Manager
4. Upon successful activation license is bound to farm ID on which it was activated and licensed product is ready to use