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(internal) VMWare virtual network interface MAC addresses and ITT product licensing

David Blackston
Topic:
Virtual systems that are hosted with VMWare can technologically provide a virtual network interface "MAC" (a.k.a. hardware) address lmhostid that can be used with ITT product FLEXnet/FLEXlm licensing with the following caveots:

  • The retrieved network interface MAC address should be static. That is, the address must not be assigned dynamically upon each reboot. If the ITT product license is based on a dynamically assigned MAC address, the license will fail upon reboot since a new address will be assigned at that time and the license information will not match this new value. (See Discussion below.)

  • The ITT product license that is assigned to that VMWare virtual network interface address should be used only on one virtual system. Use of the same licensing on other VMWare (or other virtual) systems with the same MAC address is not in compliance with the product licensing agreement with ITT.

The remainder of this tech tip discusses VMWare virtual network interface MAC address ranges in terms of static and dynamically assigned values.Discussion:

  1. Statically assigned VMWare virtual network interface MAC (hardware) addresses

    The VMWare website says that a if a user wants a persistent virtural MAC address, they need to choose one in the range of:

      00:50:56:00:00:00 through 00:50:56:3f:ff:ff

    Or for ITT VIS licensing, the relevant SERVER ID range is:

      005056000000 through 0050563fffff

    This is more easily identifiable as any 12-character SERVER ID that begins with the following 6 characters:

      005056...

    and ends with the any 4 hexedecimal characters (0:f), with the 7th and 8th characters in any hexadecimal range from

      00 through 3f

    or

      005056[00<->3f]xxxx
  2. Dynamically assigned VMWare virtual network interface MAC (hardware) addresses

    The randomly generated dynamic virtual MAC address range would have a value in the range:

      00:0c:29:xx:xx:xx

    Or for ITT VIS licensing the server ID, any 12-character SERVER ID string that begins with the 6 characters:

      000c29...

    followed by any 6 additional hexadecimal characters. That is:

      000c29000000 through 000c29ffffff

Solution:
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