License Vault Help

Migrating from License Server

If you're using the legacy License Server (also known as Floating License Server or FLS) to manage your licenses, check out the comparison tables below to learn about License Vault's benefits.

If you've already decided to switch to License Vault, skip straight to the migration instructions.

Compare License Vault and License Server

Licensing model and billing options

License Vault has two usage plans that determine the set of available features and billing options. In the table below, both plans are compared to the License Server usage terms.

License Vault:

Organization True-Up

License Vault:

Enterprise Floating

License Server

Floating licenses

No

Yes

Yes

True-Up billing

Always on

30% True-Up limit

Optional

Customizable True-Up limit

Optional

Customizable True-Up limit

True-Forward

No

Available with True-Up

Available with True-Up

Billing period

A calendar month

Customizable: a calendar month or quarter

Customizable: a calendar month or quarter

Licensing model

Per-user

1 license can be used on 2 machines by the same user

Per-user

1 license can be used on 2 machines by the same user

Per-user licensing optimization allows to switch the user's license between machines automatically

Per-machine

A user who runs an IDE on several machines consumes that many licenses

Cost

Free with prepaid licenses

True-Up fees may apply

20% surcharge

True-Up fees may apply

Free with prepaid licenses

True-Up fees may apply

Perpetual fallback licenses

Not supported

Not supported

Supported

Access to licenses and license management

License Vault Cloud

License Server

Access

Accessible from any device with an internet connection

Accessible within the private company network only

Secure connection and user authentication

Yes, single sign-on

You can set up any authentication module used in your company

No

User authentication is not supported

Reverse proxy is required to make connections secure

License management interface

A user-friendly web application to easily manage licenses and configure access rules

Limited UI. Rule configuration via regexp and property files

Installation and maintenance: reliability, scalability, backups

License Vault Cloud

License Server

Installation and maintenance

Hosted, maintained, and upgraded by JetBrains

No installation is required: setup takes a couple of minutes

Complicated installation process

Maintenance and upgrades performed by the customer

Reliability

High

Guaranteed by the multi-node deployment with redundancy and failover mechanisms

Low

A single-machine installation is extremely vulnerable to hardware failures

Scalability

High

Scales automatically according to the load

None

A single-machine installation is not scalable

Upgrades

Seamless zero-downtime upgrades provided by JetBrains

Manual upgrades with considerable downtime

Backups and recovery

Settings and license allocation data are stored on JetBrains servers with regular backups

Data is stored on the local server, backups are not supported

SLA and extended enterprise support

Available with the Enterprise Floating plan

No

Migrate to License Vault from License Server

You can switch to License Vault in a few simple steps.

  1. If you haven't started using License Vault yet, follow these instructions to set up a trial.

  2. Transfer your licenses from the License Server team to the License Vault team. Refer to Transferring licenses between teams for instructions.

  3. Share the new License Vault URL and activation instructions with your users.

Last modified: 10 January 2024