Amazon Web Service (AWS) license manager is a service that simplifies the management of software licenses across AWS and on-premises environments. This tool helps startups and businesses manage their licenses from various vendors and ensure compliance, reducing the risk of overspending on licenses or facing penalties for non-compliance. This blog provides a comprehensive overview of AWS License Manager, including how it works, key features, benefits, and a step-by-step guide on how to use it.

About AWS Manager 

AWS License Manager manages your software licenses from vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, and IBM, across AWS and on-premises environments. This gives you better control and visibility over your licenses, helping you limit licensing overages and reducing the risk of non-compliance and misreporting.  You can assign a centralized team in your company to handle software licensing contracts and establish guidelines using License Manager. These rules can then be used across the organization to govern license usage. 

How does it work?

AWS License Manager allows you to pool knowledge from various domains. Most importantly, it integrates natively with AWS services, such as the Amazon EC2 control plane, where instances are created and deleted. This means that rules and limits capture business and operational knowledge and automate controls on instance creation and application deployment.

The following diagram represents the separate but complementary roles of license administrators (who set up License Manager and control permissions) and users (who use the Amazon EC2 console to create, manage, and remove resources). 

Key metrics in AWS license manager

Features of AWS license manager 

1. Establish license terms as regulations: This can be used to give a centralized team in your company the ability to oversee software licensing contracts and establish guidelines. The organization as a whole can then regulate license usage using these guidelines.

2. License tracking enforcement- When a new EC2 instance is launched, the rules are attached via the console, CLI, or API.

3. Limit non-compliance proactively: These limitations are assessed when new instances are launched or when license rules are added to already existing instances. When license usage exceeds soft limits, it sends Amazon Simple Notification Service notifications to license administrators and end users.

4.Automate discovery of existing licenses- AWS License Manager provides a mechanism for AWS Systems Manager to discover software running on existing EC2 instances automatically.

5. Switch license easily:  Users can choose to purchase a license included from AWS to take advantage of a flexible pay-as-you-go licensing model, or they can choose to bring their license (BYOL) with their licensed media and preserve their current investments.

6.Centralize license management and reporting- This simplifies the management of incremental licensing purchases, compliance, and vendor audits throughout your organization.

7. Automate Dedicated Host license management tasks.- With AWS License Manager, administrators can specify Dedicated Host management preferences for host allocation and host capacity utilization, making it easier to manage licenses that require Dedicated Hosts.

8. Built-in AWS integration- License administrators can create and manage catalogues of IT services that are approved for use across all of their AWS accounts by adding rules to the AWS Service Catalog.

Benefits of AWS license manager 

1. Gain control over license usage- AWS License Manager centralizes license usage, giving organizations greater visibility and control over how software licenses are used and allowing them to prevent misuse before it occurs.

2. Reduce costs- administrators can determine the correct number of licenses required and avoid purchasing more licenses than necessary. AWS License Manager is simple to use and can help you save time and money when tracking and managing requests.

3. Reduce the risk of non-compliance- AWS License Manager also reduces the risk of noncompliance by providing independent software vendors (ISV) with a centralized AWS account and built-in controls to ensure that only approved users and workloads consume licenses.

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Conclusion 

AWS License Manager provides a complete solution for managing software licenses across AWS and on-premises environments. It uses centralized license management, ensuring compliance and minimising cost. It helps startups streamline their license management processes. Organizations can efficiently utilize AWS License Manager to manage their software licenses, guaranteeing compliance and cost optimization, by adhering to the detailed guidelines presented in this blog. The ability to generate detailed reports and receive real-time alerts adds to the value of this service, making it a must-have tool for any organization using AWS.

FAQs

Q1: Which AWS services are supported through AWS License Manager?
Ans: AWS License Manager works with Amazon EC2, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Marketplace, and AWS Systems Manager (both on-premises and in the cloud). 

Q2: What types of software licenses can I track using AWS License Manager?
Ans: AWS License Manager works with Amazon EC2, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Marketplace, and AWS Systems Manager. 

Q3: As an administrator, can I use managed entitlements to manage software licenses on AWS and on-premises deployments?
Ans: When you buy licenses from participating independent software vendors (ISVs) in AWS Marketplace, you can manage them across both AWS cloud accounts and on-premises settings. You can buy software licenses from AWS Marketplace and then utilize managed entitlements to distribute and track them.