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Affected Roles: Owner, Administrator
Related Digital Watchdog VMS Apps: DW Spectrum
Complexity: Medium
Last Edit: December 3, 2021
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While DW Spectrum Licenses can be shared among servers that have been merged into a single system, the licenses will still be tied specifically to the Server that they were activated on. This is tracked by identifying the Server’s HWID (Hardware ID). If the licenses are no longer available, there is a high probability that the DW Spectrum Server that the licenses belong to has been removed from your merged DW Spectrum System or has gone offline.
Another possibility is that the computer hardware or software that is hosting the Licenses and the DW Spectrum Server application has been modified in some way.
This article will outline the possible causes for licenses becoming unavailable to a DW Spectrum System and the recommended information to collect before contacted DW Support.
**NOTE: The term “Server” in this article refers to the computer that the DW Spectrum Server software is installed and hosted on. If you have multiple merged Servers, they are combined into what is referred to as a “System”.
“System” can refer to a group of merged DW Spectrum Servers, or a single server.
**NOTE: If the DW Spectrum Server has been utilizing a temporary license (Included with DW Spectrum by default), make sure that the time lease has not lapsed. If a temporary license has reached its expiration date, cameras utilizing the temporary license will need a professional license provided to continue recording.
The HWID (hardware ID) is a unique, 34-digit identifier (ex: 03000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f) that is generated when the DW Spectrum Server software is installed on a Windows, Ubuntu/Linux, or CAAS camera device. The HWID is created based on a combination of the software and hardware components of the computer that is hosting the Server.
The following hardware items are used to generate the unique HWID for each computer that DW Spectrum Server is installed on:
After installing the DW Spectrum Server software to the computer, modifying or replacing the hardware items that are listed above will cause the HWID of the Server to change, invalidating the Licenses that are attached to that Server.
To avoid this, it is recommended to DEACTIVATE all DW Spectrum Licenses on any relevant servers BEFORE making any hardware changes or if the server is going to be detached from a merged DW Spectrum System.
A change in the MAC address of the computer has occurred due to changes to the NIC configuration of the computer.
The Motherboard configuration or other hardware of the Server has changed.
Windows system updates have caused the HWID to change.
To investigate a sudden change in the Hardware ID (HWID) of your System, we will need details such as:
In addition to the licensing information, DW Support requests copies of the following files as well:
Windows-Based Versions of DW Spectrum IPVMS
Linux-Based Versions of DW Spectrum IPVMS
The above information can be made available to Digital Watchdog Technical Support after submitting a web ticket through Request For Technical Support.