Licensing & Support FAQs

Creating a Redgate ID

Using your Redgate ID to activate your tools

Managing your licenses in the customer portal

Managing license users

Explanation of the owner, admin and user roles

Error: All entitlement have been claimed

'Failed to activate the license' (old tool versions)

Finding your serial number(s)

Moving a license to a different machine

Manual/offline activation

Command line activation

How Redgate tools are licensed

Trial expired message

Upgrading

Redgate Monitor licensing

Creating a Redgate ID

If you don’t already have a Redgate ID, you can create one:

1. Go to the Redgate ID log in page and enter the email address you wish to use for your Redgate ID. Click Continue.

2.  If the email address entered does not already have a Redgate ID associated with it the next page will ask you to enter a password of your choice and below, confirm that password, then click Continue (you'll also see the option to set up SSO. See, https://documentation.red-gate.com/authentication/single-sign-on-for-redgate-apps).
3. The next page you see will be the Redgate Support landing page.
4. You'll receive an email from Redgate asking you to verify your Redgate ID. Click the confirmation link in the email to confirm your email address.

You can now log in to your account.

Using your Redgate ID to activate your tools

Historically, Redgate products were activated using just a serial number. User based licensing now means that if you log in with your Redgate ID each time you activate your license you will never run out of activations. If you're getting the message that you have, you probably just need to log in.

On the toolbar, click on Help > Manage license and you'll see here if you're logged in:

NOTE: User account licensing (logging in with your Redgate ID when activating a license) doesn't work with server based tools, SmartAssembly or tools with expired support & upgrades purchased prior to 2017.

Related articles:

Out of entitlements when activating server tools (Redgate Monitor)

All entitlements claimed error when activating a license for a desktop (client) tool

'Failed to activate the license' on old tool versions

Managing your licenses in the customer portal

You can access your licenses by logging in to the customer portal. 

Once logged in, you'll see the Supported products page. This page shows a tile for every license that you have which has an active support subscription. You will see the expiration date and number of entitlements in use for each license. For bundled licenses, the entitlements will be split under the same card.

If you click on the Licenses tab you'll see a list view of all your licenses including any that are unsupported. There are three different categories, Your subscriptions, Organization's subscriptions & Legacy licenses.

• Your subscriptions shows all of the licenses that your account is personally allocated to use.
• Organization subscriptions will show licenses that you have either been automatically allocated to, or that you are able to administrate due to your organization role.
• Legacy licenses shows all of your unsupported perpetual licenses.  

License owners and admins are able to manage a license by selecting the license card and navigating to the Allocations and Permissions section. 

Managing license users

If you're a license owner or admin, when you click on the tool card from the licenses section, you’ll see a detailed view for that product. In the right hand pop-up section, you will find a summary of the license and how it's currently being used.

If you're managing a product bundle, you'll notice that your license is split into sub groups. For example, SQL Toolbelt will be presented in three sections; Desktop Tools, Backup & Monitoring.

Inviting a user

To invite a user, navigate to the licenses section and click on the license card. Then, enter their email address in the allocate a user field and click Allocate. They’ll receive an email notifying them they have been invited to use a product. You can enter multiple email addresses to invite more than one user at a time.

Removing a user

To remove an allocated user, click on the checkbox button alongside the relevant email address in the list and then click the red remove icon. 

This has the same effect as someone deactivating the product on their computer.

Related articles: 

Managing license users, owners & admins

What does ‘Device (xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx)’ mean?

Explanation of owner, admin and user roles

A license owner can see license information and perform all actions relating to inviting and removing owners, admins and users from the license. 

License admins can see license information and perform all actions relating to inviting and removing users from the license.

A license user can view the licenses assigned to them and download the latest software.

Error: All entitlements have been claimed

Our licensing system is mostly user based (with the exception of server tools) so when activating licenses, if you are logging in with the same Redgate ID each time then you will be able to activate on as many machines as you need without running out of activations.

If you have changed your email address or you're not logging in with your Redgate ID you may get a message saying that all the entitlements have been claimed.  If this happens you'll need to log in to the customer portal and remove the existing activation.

Related articles:

Removing a user (freeing up an entitlement)

All Entitlements Claimed Error when Activating a License for a Desktop (Client) tool

'Failed to activate the license' on old tool versions

User account licensing (logging in when activating) and by extension the invitation function doesn't work if you are using a very old version of a product (prior to 2017) or an unsupported tool (eg. MySQL Compare) so if you've been invited to use a license in the customer portal and you try to activate it you will get the error message 'All of the entitlements for this serial number have already been claimed'.

To activate the license you will need to log in to the customer portal and remove yourself/the user.  Then you can install the license using a product installer which you can download from the website and activating the license key.  

Related article:

'Failed to activate the license' on old tool versions

Finding your serial number(s)

Since the introduction of user account licensing, serial keys are no longer required for activation. If you do need to locate your serial number, please contact support@red-gate.com.

License IDs cannot be used to activate the tools, they only relate to the product type. 

Moving a license to a different machine

There is no longer the need to deactivate your license to move it to another machine. If you're logging in with the same Redgate ID each time you install your license on a machine then you will never run out of activations as this only uses one entitlement. 

If an additional user activates the same license, using their Redgate ID, this will consume another entitlement.

If you're having problems activating your license on a new machine it could be that you haven't logged in with your Redgate ID or that the ID doesn't match the one previously used. You may need to log in to the customer portal and free up an activation by removing an old user or ID from the user list. 

Related article:

Moving a license to a different machine

Removing a user (freeing up a license entitlement)

Offline activation

Most of our user-based tools support the use of offline permits to activate network-restricted or air-gapped devices. Please note that some steps need to be performed on a device with internet access, as well as on the air-gapped device with our product installed.

On the Offline Device:

1. Boot up the unlicensed Redgate product and open the licensing menu by navigating to ‘Manage License…’.

2. If our product is unable to connect to our licensing service, it will automatically enter an offline state.

3. The welcome screen should appear with the option to ‘Set offline permit’.

4. Copy or note down the six character code shown at the top of the screen (e.g. "ABC123")

On the Online Device:

1. Open an internet browser and navigate to portal.red-gate.com/offline.

2. Enter the six character code from the previous step.

3. Accept the EULA terms..

4. Either copy the generated permit info to the clipboard and transfer it to a text file, or download a text file containing the permit info directly.

5. Transfer the text file containing the permit onto the offline device.

On the Offline Device:

1. Open the text file using a simple text editor (for instance, Notepad) and copy the entirety of the permit into the offline permit box on the licensing menu.

2. A status at the bottom of the screen should appear confirming the validity of the permit.

3. Press ‘Save’.

4. The Redgate product should now be in a licensed state.

Command line activations

Activating

Open a command prompt, navigate to the folder where your product executable file is located and run a command with the following syntax:

<name of productEXE> /activateSerial:<serialNumber>

1. sqlcompare /activateSerial:001-123-456789-ABCD

Deactivating

Open a command prompt, navigate to the folder where your product executable file is located and run a command with the following syntax:

<productEXE> /deactivateSerial

1. sqlcompare /deactivateSerial

How Redgate tools are licensed

User based licensing

Most Redgate tools are licensed per user.  This means that if you are a user of a single Redgate license you are entitled to install that license on as many machines as you need, so if you are planning to use the license at work, on a laptop at home and on a VM you can install on all three.

If more than one person needs to use the license you would need to purchase an additional license for each user.

Server and capacity based licensing

A few of our tools are licensed per server, such as Redgate Monitor and SQL Backup Pro, or by capacities, such as SQL Clone and Data Masker for SQL Server.

To see how each product is licensed, take a look at our Software Editions page.

In the case of the SQL Toolbelt, where there's a mixture of licenses, you would need to purchase additional licenses of the server tools if the number of servers is larger than the number of users. We offer discounts when you buy multiple licenses. Contact us at sales@red-gate.com for more information.

Supported (perpetual)

A supported perpetual license is covered with support & upgrades contract entitling you to the latest tool versions, bug fixes, platform support, new features and technical support.

Subscription

A subscription license includes support & upgrades in the rented subscription of the product also entitling you to the latest tool versions, bug fixes, platform support, new features and technical support as long as the subscription is active. If it's not renewed you will lose access to the product. For more information on subscriptions please contact sales@red-gate.com. 

Trial expired message

If your trial period has expired and you are looking to purchase or you require more time to evaluate then please contact sales@red-gate.com

You can download the latest version of a product using Check for Updates, the customer portal or the Redgate website.

• If you download the latest version from our website or the customer portal, you need to run the installer to upgrade the product.  Some Redgate products are available as part of bundle and you can select which products you want to upgrade when you run the installer.

• If you use Check for Updates, the installer runs automatically.

Troubleshooting

Before upgrading you may want to check the system requirements which can be found on our documentation site by choosing your product and then clicking Requirements.

If you run into any problems after upgrading a Redgate tool, SQL Server Management Studio or SQL Server, in most cases an uninstall and subsequent reinstall of the Redgate tool should fix the problem.

Redgate Monitor licensing

Redgate Monitor is licensed per Windows server (either physical or virtual).

If running a Windows cluster, every node participating in the cluster requires a license. This includes passive nodes: these are automatically detected, and it is not possible to monitor only part of a cluster.

Redgate Monitor licensing does not check the number of SQL Instances installed on an individual server.

Licensing for Azure SQL Databases

The licensing model for Azure SQL Databases requires one full Redgate Monitor license allocation per five Azure SQL databases.

Licensing for Azure Managed Instances

Azure Managed Instances require one full Redgate Monitor license per Managed Instance.

SQL Toolbelt Licensing

Whilst SQL Toolbelts are licensed per user, Redgate Monitor (as part of the Toolbelt) is still licensed per server (physical or virtual).

Example: You have a 30 user SQL Toolbelt license - this entitles you to 30 Redgate Monitor licenses.