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Terminal Services Licensing

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by smasterson

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I am working with a company that has 8 Windows XP workstations and 1 Windows 2000 Server. I installed Terminal Services for them to have access an MS Access database across a WAN. I have installed and activated the Terminal Services Licensing Server and it has correctly givin out built in licenses to the XP workstations. I ran into a problem when I when to fire up the terminal client on the third workstation. I got denied assess to the server. Puzzled I rechecked everything and could find no reason why the client couldn't connect using Terminal Services. Two weeks later, in anticipation of four more workstations I added a 5 pack of CAL's on the server. Oddly enough I could connect now to the terminal server with more than 3 pc's! Does anyone know why Terminal Services was locking me out for lack of CAL's even though I had plenty?? It almost seems like the terminal connection has been issued another CAL for the same machine that has been previously issued a CAL. When I browse the Licensing Service it reports that I have 15 CAL's install and 14 Reached. How could I be reaching 14 CAL's with only 8 workstations on the network?? Not everyone uses the terminal server so we are good for now but the four new pc's will be here soon, will I need to buy more CAL's??

-TIA

6 replies

by tcstech

I ran into a similar prob last week. We had 2 nics on the server (both on the same subnet) and clients where connecting to both ips on the server, hence giving out 2 licenses per client. I changed the ip on the 2nd nic to a non-existant subnet and all is well. This may or may not be the case with you, but sure sounds like it...

Reed

by clive.popham

We have had similar problems. It is all to do with the new licensing model MS uses for TS. When any client first connects to TS session it is assigned a TCAL (Temporary Client Access License). This can be assigned to a host name and/or an IP address. Check your license server and see how it has assigned the TCAL's. These TCAL's expire after a period (no fixed length as far as I can see) after which the normal CAL is is assigned. Again these CAL's can be assigned by hostname and/or IP address. We had CAL's assigned to UNIX WS using citrix clients that had both their hostname and IP address issued with a CAL. Two licences gobbled up. Multiply this by the number of WS you have and you soon run out of CAL's. MS answer! Wait fot TCAL's to expire!
Check these Tech Net articles: Q294729 - Terminal Services Clients Consume Multiple Terminal Services CALS because of storage issues.

Q287687 - Terminal Services Licensing enhancements (This also ,contains the fix for Q294729)

Very informative.

by smasterson

These articles are geart for issues with TCAL's but my problem is with regular server CAL's. The server is running SP3 so this TCAL fix has aready been applied. The TCAL's have been handled correctly by the Licensing Server but it's the regular CAL's that have gotten out of control...

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