CF 2021 license type switch from recovery

[billwooten770]

How do I switch from recovery to production license with keys. The idea is to have production in one place with disaster recovery in another place. the idea would be to initiate a rollover to the servers during an outage etc.

Does the recovery servers watermark PDF etc and would I have to activate our recovery servers as production. I honestly cannot find anything on this topic and differences such as watermark on recovery installs. I also could not find out how to update the license type without re-install.

[Charlie Arehart · Accepted solution]

Bill, you're really raising three topics, which are indeed related but separately documented (to different degrees).

1) First, as for use of any CF license key for DR (or staging or test or central development), that is covered in the CF EULA (End User License agreement). I realize many regard reading a EULA as like getting their teeth pulled, but the CF EULA is really pretty straightforward and only several pages total, with just a few paragraphs on matters like "disaster recovery" (the term literally used in the EULA).

I have a blog post with info on how to find the CF EULA, either locally to you or online.

2) Then you ask whether you should expect a watermark on an instance running as DR. The answer is no. Only the Developer edition (what's referred to in the EULA as "developer edition software") has any watermark on the output of things like cfdocument. That said, I am not aware thet there's any doc that lists WHAT features might show such a watermark. (I can only imagine it to be PDF-related tags and functions.) But no, using a "real" license for DR, you will NOT see any watermark.

3) Finally, you ask questions about activation. That's a totally separate (though again, related) topic, and that's covered in detail here: 
https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/using/coldfusion-licensing-activation.html

Note carefully how that page first has several questions--which you must expand to see the answers, and then it ALSO has several pages worth of more info below that, including for example an entire section on deactivation, if that may be helpful. 

4) To be clear, there is NOT currently a way to change the type of license in the CF Admin UI. I have filed a bug report for that. That should come in the future (and should not require a restart).

Even so, for now it IS possible to change the license type by modifying the underlying licenseinfo.properties file that this page modifies (not to be confused with the older and still existing license.properties file), both in the cfusion/lib folder. I discuss this more in another thread here.

While these things I share are quite "documentation", they show that searching this site (community.adobe.com) and the CF portal (coldfusion.adobe.com) can often help one find  info that others have shared.

Again, we can help that Adobe will fix the deployment-type UI problem in the future. Add your vote to the tracker ticket. As I like to say, it's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. And I hope I've turned on some overhead lights for your path here. 🙂 

[billwooten770]

Thank you. I will dig into the EULA but really this should be more plain. I think it wonderful that they will have more in the admin UI in the future. I have been around since V3 and still going.

[Charlie Arehart]

Understood. I'm just a friendly librarian here, not the publisher/vendor. 🙂 Hopefully they may hear your plea.

If you find that your looking ointo things leads you to conclude that what I shared was at least what reasonably could be found, I hope you'll mark the answer as "correct" (if some later answer is better, you can mark that as the answer also or instead).

One last thing: I said above about the EULA that it was "several pages total, with just a few pages on matters like "disaster recovery"". I meant instead a few paragraphs. I have edited it.

[Dave Watts]

I fully agree, @billwooten770 . I'm really not that pleased with the direction CF licensing is going, but I can't say I'm that surprised either. The natural direction is to squeeze every penny from license fees that you can, and we've had it pretty good up until the last release I think.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC