SIMATIC WinCC Open Architecture Forum

We have been asked by a client if it is possible to license WinCC OA not using a physical license dongle or external license services (I.E. a software license on the local machine). Reading through the documentation that should be possible but I would like to know if there are any issues to consider when the WinCC OA system is running in a virtual environment (offline, no internet). Things like:

• Virtual machine backup and restore. Will restoring a backup of the virtual machine affect the license?

• Since such a software license is probably "hardware bound" to what degree could changing the virtual hardware of the virtual machine affect the license?

• Will moving the virtual machine from one physical host to another physical host affect the license?

• Anything else?

Perhaps this is documented somewhere but I was unable to find it.

Regards,
Jan

You must always activate the licence locally, as a dongle or via a Codemeter licence server.
The licence is hardware-bound for all types.
Personally, I would never use a local licence for virtual machines. As soon as the machine is moved to another host, the licence becomes invalid.
If you are working offline, the best choice is a dongle with a dongle server.

I suspected as much.
Thanks for the reply!

Regards,
Jan