Understanding licensing in terminal server environment

Question

We operate in a hybrid terminal-server environment where our users have Adobe Acrobat Standard installed to their local machines, as well as it is installed to multiple session hosts in the remote environment. Our users are licensed with Adobe's Named User Licensing (NUL), so each user has their own account that is managed centrally from our admin portal online.

Our terminal server environment uses .VHDX user profile disks that are mounted to one of the three session hosts automatically when a user initiates their connection. Unfortunately however, Adobe only allows users to sign in to two different devices with their Adobe accounts. Even though the user's profile disk moves from session host to session host (assuming there was no mounting / unmounting issues) - Adobe is recognizing each device as a different one and is pushing the users past this "2 device" limit.

At this point I'm at a loss and unsure how to resolve this so our users don't have to constantly sign in and out of thier Adobe accounts. I thought that the shared-licensing would make sense, but apparently that's not optimal / functional for terminal servers.

The version of Adobe installed is Adobe Acrobat Standard (32-bit) 2025.001.20756)
The session hosts are Windows server 2019 v. 1809

UPDs are set to store all user settings and data on said disk

AnandSri · Accepted Answer

Hello @Zach125

I hope you are doing well, and thank you for reaching out.

The behavior you’re observing is expected with Named User Licensing (NUL) in hybrid or multi-session terminal environments. Currently, NUL is designed for individual desktop installations where the licensing and device ID are tied to a unique hardware fingerprint. In your case, since users are connecting to multiple Windows Server 2019 session hosts, Acrobat identifies each host as a separate device, even if the same profile disk (.VHDX) is mounted. This causes the service to exceed the two-device activation limit per Adobe account.

See this article to learn more about the Shared Device Licensing (SDL) for lab or shared environments, and Federated ID with SSO for seamless access: https://adobe.ly/4n5qvSo

You can post your question to the Enterprise support community and see if experts can provide a workaround for this issue.

Current recommended suggestions are:

Switch to Shared Device Licensing (SDL)

Use Federated ID with SSO and Conditional Access

See these additional resources to learn more:

Adobe Enterprise Toolkit (ETK).

Microsoft Entra + Adobe Identity Management.

Adobe Licensing Terms Overview.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.