Terminal server licenses

[Guest]

Evening,

We have a customer who has two Windows 2003 standard servers with Terminal
Services turned on. When they were set up the customer activated the servers
with the 120 day license. About two weeks into his testing he bought 20CAL
licenses for both servers, installed them, and everything seemed fine. Now
all of a sudden he is getting messages on his server that says that the
licenses are set to expire in the next 15 days. Logging into the server we
see no option to set the 20CAL license packs to be the default licenses for
the server to use. Are we missing something or is there some magical trick
to getting the server to recognize the new licenses? Or will the server
reach the expire date, see the new licenses and POOF everything works from
there? Please help. Thanks.

 

[Vera Noest [MVP]]

It's not exactly clear to me which licenses you installed.
I assume that you mean TS CALs, when you write about CALs?
You need both (server CALs and TS CALs).

And did you install and activate a Terminal Server Licensing
Server? And installed the 20 TS CALs on the TS Licensing Server?
Do you see your TS CALs when you open TS Licensing Manager?

If so, did you buy Per User or Per Device licenses?
If you bought Per User TS CALs, is the Terminal Server (not the
Licensing Server!) set to use "Per User" licensing? The default is
"Per Device".
You can check this from Administrative Tools - Terminal Services
Configuration - Server Settings
If it's set to Per Device mode, it will look for a Device TS CAL
and will not issue your Per User TS CALs.

Check this article, it explains that even after you have
switched licensing mode on the TS, your Per User TS CAL count will
not be decremented:

822134 - The Function of Terminal Server CALs in Windows Server
2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=822134