Will changing the MAC Address of a Virtual Machine affect Power Monitoring Expert (PME) 7.2.x and 8.x installed on the machine?

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Issue:
There is a requirement to change the MAC Address of the Virtual Machine where Power Monitoring Expert is installed.

Product Line:
Power Monitoring Expert 7.2.x
Power Monitoring Expert 8.x

Power Monitoring Expert 9.0

Power Monitoring Expert 2020

Environment:
Power Monitoring Expert Software Licensing

Cause:
Power Monitoring Expert Licensing using Floating Licensing Manager will become untrusted under certain scenarios. An untrusted license is unusable and will shut down PME until a repair is performed using the Floating License Manager.

Resolution:
This depends on how many MAC addresses are available to the VM:
1) If there is more than one MAC address available to the VM (for example, some Hypervisors support allocating multiple virtualized NICs to a guest Operating System), then all of those MAC addresses must change at once in order for the license to go untrusted.

2) If the VM only has one MAC address, the license will go untrusted when the MAC address is changed. It's always recommended to return the license using the Floating License Manager prior to changing the MAC Address of the Virtual Machine.

NOTE:
If the Licenses become untrusted, the activation IDs will need to be returned and then reactivated.

Untrusted licenses – There can be technical reasons such as a drastic time change or a change of the Unique Machine Identifier when the licenses will become untrusted in the Floating License Manager (FLM) as seen in the screenshot below. If this happens, the license icons will be shown in red and the system will enter a 20-day grace period. Please contact technical support to determine the cause and resolve the issue.

Schneider Electric Floating License Manager

License Returns – Once activated, a license is “locked” to its host computer (physical or virtual), and therefore can only be activated on one machine at a time. Returning the license simply means reversing the activation process, that is, “unlocking” the license from its host, thereby making it available to be activated again, either on another host or the same host. By default, licenses can only be returned once per calendar year. If necessary, the return limit can be increased by the SRC (Software Registration Center).

Software Registration Centers are open Monday to Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST).
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