Q: How to manage my GroundWork license?

A: As a user with the Admin role, go to Administration > License. Additionally, see more information regarding your GroundWork license below.

What is a license key?

  • Each installation of GroundWork Monitor Enterprise requires a key. 
  • If you need a new key, please submit a support request, or contact Sales.
  • For new installations a key is emailed to customers following purchase.
  • For existing installations, you will need to input a new key if your existing key has reached the subscription expiration date or you have exceeded the number of devices purchased. The License page will display a Warning when your device allocation is over the soft limit (typically slightly less than the hard limit).
  • For a free 60-day trial license key for larger numbers of devices, please see Request a Trial.

How can I see my license details?

  • In GroundWork Monitor, go to Administration > License.
  • The Host Licensed number is the limit of hosts that can be monitored based your GroundWork License, and Hosts Monitored is the actual number of hosts currently being monitored. Within this page you can also  see your License End Date and the Time remaining on this license.
  • This is also the location where you can apply or update your license key. If you need to adjust your license please contact sales@gwos.com.

What do I do if I am over my license limit?

  • It is recommended to check your license limit prior to configuring Cloud Hub and TCG connections. See Cloud Hub Troubleshooting. 
  • If you exceed your hard limit of devices, you will not be able to log in and adjust anything but the license key. Your system will continue to monitor and alert. If you encountered this in error, please Submit a Ticket to get a temporary key. It is also possible to remove devices from the command line in many cases.

How can I determine and adjust my device count?

  • In GroundWork Monitor, go to Configuration > Nagios Monitoring > Maintenance > Device Cleanup to view a device summary.

  • You can adjust your device count with the following options:

    Using these options deletes historical data! If that data is important to you, you may want to make a backup of the GWCollageDB database.

    • Cleanup: Remove devices that are no longer used. Be aware this will remove all LogMessage and performance data for these devices from the GWCollageDB (foundation) database.
    • Forceclean: Use with Cleanup. Removes devices that have no log messages associated. This is a more aggressive option and is needed in cases where a device is in the device table, but all log messages pertaining to it have been removed, either by operator intervention, or by data retention processes. In the rare case where Cleanup does not remove devices NOT assigned to hosts, try the forceclean option in addition to Cleanup to remove these devices as well. Using this option may delete devices that are classified as snmptrap or syslog generated. This is because it removes devices for which no historical massages exist in the database. Such devices may exist if you have been managing the data saved by trimming out old messages. This is by design, and usually desirable.
    • Cleansnmp: If you no longer want to use devices created solely by SNMP Traps, you can also remove them with this option. Of course, if you do this, Events will no longer display events for deleted devices. Perform a commit after this process.
    • Cleansyslog: Remove syslog devices only.  If your GroundWork installation is still receiving SNMP Traps and/or Syslog messages, devices will be newly created and the count will be increased, accordingly. Devices that you do not wish to be in your Total Number of Devices, should not be sending SNMP Traps or Syslog messages to your GroundWork installation.

What are GroundWork default hosts and do they count against my license?

  • GroundWork Monitor 8.x out-of-the-box includes self monitoring of containers, named gw8-docker*, which comprise a total of 24 hosts. 
  • You can view these hosts by going to Configuration > Dashboards > Status > GroundWork Servers.
  • As of GroundWork Monitor 8.1.0, these hosts do count against your license. 
  • You can choose to delete these hosts by deleting the Docker connector under Configuration > Cloud Hub to reduce the posted device count on the License page. If you have the overhead, however, you can choose to keep these to have the server perform some useful self-monitoring. 

How does the host count work?

  • GroundWork Monitor counts devices in the foundation database as hosts, rather than hosts that you may have added to the configuration database, at least until you Commit these hosts and start monitoring. 
  • Devices are added to the GroundWork system using the Nagios Monitoring Commit process, by Cloud Hub, and by TCG Connections. 
  • For Cloud Hub, each instance is a device. For hosts, each host with a unique IP address is a device.
  • Please note that prior versions used device counts that could be more or less than the host count, as some devices were maintained for Syslog or SNMP Traps only, and some hosts were allowed to use one device for multiple hosts (e.g., two host names with one IP address). As of 8.2.1, these are now one-to-one, so your host count may change. 

How can I remove unwanted hosts?

  • To reduce the number of hosts counted against your license, you can remove hosts from the Configuration > Nagios Monitoring > Hosts screen, and then Commit the resulting smaller configuration.

  • You can also delete unused Cloud Hub or TCG connections. It's also possible to reduce the number of hosts monitored by Cloud Hub in virtual environments by limiting the visibility of some hosts using access restrictions on the monitoring account. See Cloud Hub Troubleshooting and How to delete hosts.

    When you remove a host or service, you remove all of the event history for that host or service from the active foundation database. You do NOT remove the event history from the Archive, so reporting (at least up to the last time archive was run, daily at 1am) will still have all the event history. 

    Similarly, when you change a hostname, you will remove that host and create a new one with the new name. All events for that host will be removed from the active database and preserved in Archive as of the last time the archive ran. 

How can I manage encrypted internal passwords?

  • The Security page is the location for the internal password administration. REST-API password encryption is supported and enabled by default. See System Security.