If you deploy a copy of an existing database with activated sites with the same license that was used for activation then a re-activation should not be necessary.

This does not answer the question.

What is the API we can call to activate / deactive a cloud license?

-Bernie

We have a similar issue.

We have a production and a test site in an Azure. We are automating restoring of a production DB to the test DB. After that we update [tblSiteDefinition] and [tblHostDefinition] tables with a test site URLs. After restarting a test site, we have a new setup up and running except for the licenses. When I go to the CMS -> Admin -> Config -> Manage Websites -> Cloud Licence, I see that the test site license is active, but the site displays a message that it is not. After I deactivate and activate the license, the message disappears. I couldn't find any license mapping in the DB which I could update. Application restart also doesn't help.

How can I automate license activation? And why it displays the license as active while it is not?

Had an issue that affected some environments this morning when I had updated some licenses last week in the release pipeline. I found that I had to manually activate the renewed licenses - but only after errors appeared because I'd forgotten about this manual step. :sadface:

Would be very nice to be able to activate licenses via some API/script.

As long as your site has been previously acitvated, and your URLs are consistent (I mean the manage websites main URL - not one of the host names) across all running instances, there is no need to activate the site. This is the benefit of the newer instance bound licenses

Hi @Marcus.

What occured was that a license was about to expire so:

• a new one was created
• was uploaded to the build/release pipeline
• then deployed with a normal release

A few days later a licensing exception error message appeared and sure enough, it was the last remaining step to manually activate the license that was forgotten. (Multiply by number of different cloud environments and/or sites)

Thing is, if a human can press the one (or two+ for multi-site) button(s) to activate such a license, I think there's an oportunity to automate it and achieve the same result.

It sounds like you will need to 'bake' your images once the activation has occured. 

A far easier and more modern way of running Episerver is through the use of the Digital Experience Cloud Service, where there is no license and it runs as a subscription.

Hello Marcus.

I am not sure I follow. Are you able to elaborate on:

> 'bake' your images once the activation has occured.

Also, I understand there is another delivery model Episerver would have us use but this is besides the point. A little brave to use "modern" and "running Episerver" in the same sentence wouldn't you say? ;-)

The Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™ is a unified digital content, commerce and marketing platform in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The platform uses artificial intelligence, campaign management and behavioural analytics to deliver one-to-one personalization across all channels. The solution helps companies quickly increase engagement, revenue and productivity, while getting the fastest time to value. 

I'd say using "modern" and "running Episerver" in the same sentence is very appropriate, but that is beside the point.

I had made an assumption that you were spinning up new instances using some pre-baked images as the starting point but having re-read your message i'm not sure that is the case.

Ultimately (and as you now know) as long as the instances that are running have already had the site activated from the beginning you should be all good.