Exchange server, licence logging service and missing CAL's

[shug101]

Dear All,

Before I tell you about my hugely mind bending, teeth grinding problem .. I would like to introduce myself! My names Shug, I’m 20 and from the UK. More importantly and reluctantly I have recently been promoted to “IT Supervisor”

Anyway! So I come in one morning and the server ran out of memory again; could do anything on the server and had to push the power button to turn the server off. Once it booted back up, nobody could access anything. The mapped drives where locked out and no one could access there emails. The server was displaying the following error message: “Warning: Licence usage for a product licensed in per server mode is nearing the maximum number of licenses purchased. Consult the Application event log or Licence Manager from the Administrative Tools folder for more
information”. I went to view the installed CAL’s inside licensing snap in, also in administrative tools. This is where it gets a bit strange; it displays a different number of installed licences and maximum usage every time the server is restarted. Even worse the license codes and number of licenses have gone missing. There are no paper copy of the CAL we purchased. Every few hours the license server will need to be restarted otherwise everyone will get locked out, and a relatively new problem is the exchange information store needs restarting as well. If both these services are not restarted on an hourly basis, exchange locks users out and no one can access server resources.

Is there something that can be done? Is there an underlining problem that is coursing the services to stop working? Or is the best solution just, restore a backup? Can I still obtain my CAL’s by contacting MS and providing our product ID?

Because the CAL’s are missing the server locks users out on the bases that it thinks there are no valid licenses installed ????? but as soon as you restart the license logging service everything works fine again.

Thanks for your help
Best Regards

Shug!

 

[Dashsa]

Hello Shug,
The below information is purely from my own experience and may not be 100% but I experienced the same sort of issues on our Exchange Server.
The licenses are getting booted due to the lack of space on the C drive. Once you have run low on disk space it seems to boot the licenses, the solution is of course to either free up some space or increase the size of the partition. Freeing up space is a much easier option and you should try to have at lease a GB of free space on the C drive. I am assuming you have a partition and you may want to move any files that you can to another Dive. Once you have freed up space you will notice an increase in performance and less CAL and services issues.
As for getting the actual paper versions of the CAL's you should be able to request copies from your reseller.
hope this helps

 

[shug101]

It was a good suggest, the remaining memory on the C drive and other partitions were very low. In fact only a few hundred meg left. I cleared some space on the server; around 12 gb free on each partition now. After some basic maintenance, updates and disk cleanups, I rebooted the server and checked to see if the CAL’s were back .. unfortunately not. Although .. so far the problem seems to have retreated, I have not needed to restart the two services yet. And performance seems to be a little bit better.

Could anything else have coursed the CAL’s to go missing, considering I have freed up some space on its HHD?

Many thanks and thanks for your time!

Shug

 

[Dashsa]

Once the CAL's have been booted you will need to re enter them all. Once you have re entered them you can export the license file using the backup license wizard.

 

[shug101]

Hi, it’s hard to tell if both problems have been solved. I have not needed to restart the exchange information store although as one user has had problems with emails which were resolved by restart the licence logging service. The users left her computer one from yesterday and I have only needed to restart the service once today.


I’ll give it some more time and see how it goes!


Thanks for your help

Shug

 

[shug101]

Seem like I still have the same problem even after freeing up plenty of space on the server. 8:26AM, noone could access emails, mapped drives or any server reasouce related to that server. Had to restart the License logging service and microsoft exchange information store before anyone could access there emails.

Regards

Shug

 

[ShackDaddy]

This problem is not going to be solved without some valid keys to enter. That's the fix. The reason you are supposed to keep the paper keys around is so that if you have a disaster recovery situation or something flukey like this, you'll not be screwed.

You really need to get hold of the CAL license keys. If you can talk to the accounting dept, they should be able to track down when they were purchased and may even be keeping the keys with the receipts. Normally if you buy the CALs through a particular vendor, that vendor may even have a record of the licenses/CALs you purchased.

If you can at least get the receipt, you may be able to call the Microsoft Licensing Clearinghouse and see if they will give you replacement keys:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776876(WS.10).aspx

Worst case scenario: your company will have to buy the CALs again, and will learn to keep track of its licensing assets.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[ShackDaddy]

Oh, I forgot to note that this has happened to me a few times with SBS 2003. After the first time, I reentered the CALs and they disappeared again a few weeks later. Then I actually exported the licenses to a file and I think I was able to reimport them the next time it happened. After that I must have loaded the right patch/service pack, because it never happened again.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net