License Manager lets you subscribe, manage, and track your third-party licenseusage on Google Cloud. As an administrator, you can use License Manager to offerper-user licensing products, like Microsoft Office, to your users with nolong-term commitments and no overhead of managing compliance.

Key benefits

License Manager offers the following key benefits of managing your third-partylicenses on Google Cloud:

• Streamlined procurement: License Manager offers some of the most commonper-user licenses, like Microsoft Office, directly from Google Cloud withoutthe hassle of negotiating yet another vendor contract. Configure licenses injust a few clicks, and you are ready to begin using your applications.

• Cost flexibility: for per-user licenses, you can scale up whenever youneed more licenses and scale back the next month when you don't need as manylicenses, to optimize costs. The License Manager dashboard offers insightsinto how many licenses have been consumed and your remaining license countfor the month.

• Simplified reporting: Google Cloud handles all the necessary licensetracking and reporting to third-party software vendors, so you can focus onyour work instead of complex reporting requirements.

How does License Manager work?

The two main components of License Manager — the License Configuration and theLicense Manager agent — work together to authenticate, activate, and monitor theper-user licenses installed on your virtual machines.

• License Configuration: stores the information for the licensedapplication, region, and number of licenses you want to authorize.

• License Manager agent: handles any necessary activation of the softwaredirectly to the third-party vendor from your virtual machine (VM) instance.Since some third-party licenses are based on the number of users who accessthe software in a given time period, the agent also verifies an accurate countof licenses consumed from your License Configuration.

In the License Manager dashboard, administrators with access can review thenumber of active licenses across their organization and scale up or down thenumber of licenses needed each month.

Supported licensing products

License Manager supportsMicrosoft Office LTSC 2021 Professional Plus.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to License Manager:

• License Manager supports VMs running only on Compute Engine.

• License Manager supports a default of 5000 licenses per license configuration.To request an increase in quota, contactlicense-manager-onboarding@google.com.

• License Manager supports one license configuration per product per region. Youcannot have multiple license configurations for the same product in the sameregion.

• License Manager is supported in the following regions:

  • asia-south1
  • asia-southeast1
  • australia-southeast1
  • australia-southeast2
  • europe-west2
  • europe-west3
  • us-central1
  • us-east4

  If you don't see the region you need in this list, reach out tolicense-manager-onboarding@google.com for more information.

Get started with License Manager

To use licenses configured by License Manager, do the following:

1. Enable the License Manager API
2. Create a License Configuration in Google Cloud console
3. Install and activate the License Manager agent on a VM

Before you begin

Verify that you have the Identity and Access Management roleService Account User to enableAPIs in your project. For more information, seeGrant an IAM role by using the Google Cloud console.

Enable the License Manager API

To enable the License Manager API, follow these steps:

1. Open theAPIs & Services page in Google Cloud console.

   Go to the APIs & Services page

2. ClickEnable APIs & Services.

3. ChooseLicense Manager API with the service namelicensemanager.googleapis.com.

4. ClickEnable.

Create a License Configuration

For some licensing products, your billing obligation begins immediately upon thecreation of the license configuration. For information on each product's billingconsiderations, seeSupported licensing products.

To create a new license configuration using Google Cloud console, follow thesesteps:

1. Open theLicense Manager page in Google Cloud console.

   Go to the License Manager page

2. ClickCreate License Configuration.

3. Enter aName for your configuration.

4. Select aLocation for your configuration.

5. Choose theProduct you want to associate with the license. For anup-to-date list of supported products, seeSupported licensing products.Note that you can only have one license configuration per product per region.

6. Enter the totalNumber of Licenses you want to enable.

7. Confirm the information you entered is accurate by clicking the confirmationcheckbox.

8. ClickCreate to finalize your license configuration.

Install the License Manager agent

Each VM with a license enabled by License Manager requires the License Manageragent installed to enable accurate authentication and activation.

For the latest location of the License Manager agent, contactlicense-manager-onboarding@google.com.

To install the License Manager agent, open a Powershell terminal on your VM anddo the following:

1. Add thegooget repository:

   googet addrepo  google-cloud-license-manager-agent https://packages.cloud.google.com/yuck/repos/google-cloud-license-manager-agent-windows-x86_64

2. Run theinstall command for the License Manager agent:

   googet install google-cloud-license-manager-agent

3. Edit and validate the configuration file:

   Installing the License Manager agent creates a folder inC:\Program Files\Google\google-cloud-license-manager-agentcontaining agent-related files. You will need to edit this configuration filewith the name of the products you want to activate.

   The following is the content of a configuration file for activating Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus:

   {  "log_level": "INFO",  "log_to_cloud": true,  "products":    [      {        "name": "Office2021ProfessionalPlus",        "source_path": "C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office"      }    ]}

   If your VM is using multiple products enabled by License Manager, you willneed to add each product to the configuration file.

4. Verify that the file is formatted correctly by running thevalidate_configcommand:

   & 'C:\Program Files\Google\google-cloud-license-manager-agent\google-cloud-license-manager-agent.exe' validate_config

5. Restart the agent for the changes to take effect:

   Restart-Service -Name 'google-cloud-license-manager-agent' -Force

6. Run theactivate command for your product:

   & 'C:\Program Files\Google\google-cloud-license-manager-agent\google-cloud-license-manager-agent.exe' activate Office2021ProfessionalPlus

   For some licensing products like Microsoft Office LTSC, Microsoft requiresthat these licenses activate directly against Microsoft servers over theinternet. For information on whether the VM needs internet access foractivation, see the product's page inSupported licensing products.

To confirm that the activation was successful, open any Microsoft Officeapplication on your VM and do these steps:

1. ClickFile to open the menu.
2. ClickAccount.

If the license activation was successful, you should seeProduct Activated.

Manage your licenses

After creating a license configuration, you can control the number of licensesyou need by increasing or decreasing the license count, or deactivating thelicense configuration entirely. Deactivated licenses can be reactivated within90 days.

Increase or decrease your license count

Some licenses are billed by the calendar month in which they are active. Thismeans that increases to license count take effect immediately, but decreases ordeactivations take effect in the next calendar month. For information on howeach license is billed, see the product's page inSupported licensing products.

To change the total license count for a license configuration, follow these steps:

1. Open theLicense Manager page in Google Cloud console.

   Go to the License Manager page

2. From the menu, clickEdit License Volume.

3. Enter a new license volume amount.

4. ClickConfirm for the new license volume to take effect.

Deactivate a license configuration

You can see deactivated licenses on the License Manager page. The status of adeactivated license is shown asInactive. These license configurationsremain visible for 90 days before they are permanently deleted.

When you no longer need licenses in a particular region, you can deactivate thelicense configuration using the following steps:

1. Open theLicense Manager page in Google Cloud console.

   Go to the License Manager page

2. On the license configuration you want to deactivate, clickActions toshow additional options.

3. From the menu, clickDeactivate License Configuration.

4. ClickConfirm to deactivate the license configuration.

Reactivate a license configuration

You can reactivate a deactivated license configuration using the followingsteps:

1. On the license configuration you want to reactivate, clickActions toshow additional options.
2. From the menu, clickReactivate License Configuration
3. ClickConfirm to reactivate the license configuration.

License configurations that were previously active in the current calendar monthwill default to the previous license count. Otherwise, the reactivated licenseconfiguration defaults to a license count of 0. After reactivation, you canchange the license count by using the steps mentioned inIncrease or decrease your license count.

Uninstall the License Manager agent

To begin uninstallation, you must first deactivate your licensing products:

1. In a Powershell terminal with Administrator mode, use thedeactivatecommandto deactivate the product:

   & 'C:\Program Files\Google\google-cloud-license-manager-agent\google-cloud-license-manager-agent.exe' deactivate Office2021ProfessionalPlus

2. Uninstall the agent with the following command:

   googet cleangooget remove google-cloud-license-manager-agent

Agent logging

The License Manager agent supports both local and cloud-based logs usingCloud Logging in the Google Cloud console.

Local Logging

Local logs are located in the folderC:\Program Files\Google\google-cloud-license-manager-agent\logs.

Each log file has a maximum size of 25 MB before a new one is created. There areat most 3 log files that exist at a time. Once this limit is reached, the oldestlog file will be deleted.

Cloud-based logging using Logging

If enabled, you can see cloud-based logs using the following steps:

1. Open theLogs Explorer page in Google Cloud console.

   Go to the Logs Explorer page

2. ClickAll Resources.

3. From the menu, clickGCP Location and then clickGlobal.

4. ClickApply.

5. In the query editor, entergoogle-cloud-license-manager-agent.

6. ClickRun query.

You should see the logs generated by the agent instances running on all your VMinstances. To filter the logs from a specific machine, use the filters availablein the interface.

Create a service perimeter for License Manager

VPC Service Controls helps you mitigate data exfiltration risks from yourGoogle-managed services.

With VPC Service Controls, you can configure service perimeters around theresources of your Google-managed services and control the movement of dataacross the perimeter boundary.

To create a service perimeter, follow theVPC Service Controls guide to creating a service perimeter.

To fully protect License Manager, add all of the following APIs to theservice perimeter:

• License Manager API (licensemanager.googleapis.com)
• Cloud Logging API (logging.googleapis.com)
• Compute Engine API (compute.googleapis.com)
• Agent Communication API (agentcommunication.googleapis.com)

Your service perimeter must restrict all these services for the License Manageragent to work with VPC Service Controls.

What's next

• Microsoft Licensing on Google Cloud

• Microsoft Licensing on Google Cloud FAQ

• Cloud Logging