Citrix licensing telemetry and compliance status are hot topics. Reporting telemetry data is mandatory to be compliant and receive support.
Citrix customers must correctly report licensing telemetry data for all their Citrix (on-prem) products. If not, you will be flagged as incompliant, which can lead to a termination of your support services.
I want to thank the following persons for their contributions to this article:
Setting the scene
I wrote this article to help you to be and to remain compliant. The last thing you and your organization want is to be unable to open a support case. Licensing telemetry reporting can be a bit confusing though. You may be flagged as non-compliant and not know why. As a Citrix customer, you may be unsure of what is expected of you. This article includes an action plan to help you remain compliant.
| Please also read the official Citrix License Telemetry FAQ. |
Before you continue reading: yes, the Citrix terms and guidelines state that licensing telemetry is necessary.
“Through your purchase of Customer Success Services from Citrix you agree to allow Citrix to audit your license compliance pursuant to the license compliance terms explained in the CSS Support Guide. You understand that Citrix License Server collects and reports limited license telemetry to Citrix for on-premises product licenses to support license compliance. For those licenses, Citrix requires that you transition to License Server Version 11.17.2 Build 40000 by March 31, 2023, and subsequent new License Server versions within 6 months of the release of each new Version. License Server license collection and reporting (electronic or manual) must be active for License Server Version 11.17.2 Build 40000 and beyond. Unless you have elected manual reporting, you agree to adjust your firewalls as necessary to allow electronic license reporting. For a detailed explanation of the license telemetry functionality and reporting requirements, see the Citrix Licensing product documentation. Should you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care. Citrix may suspend or terminate your Customer Success Services for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements do not apply to the extent prohibited by law or regulation.”
Still not convinced? Please see the section Citrix End-User License Agreement (EULA) below for a more detailed explanation.
Why would I as a customer be incompliant?
In summary, your licensing telemetry data must be reported to Citrix and this must be done regularly. Also, the reported data must show a valid use of licenses.
Let me be more precise: what is expected of you by Citrix is the following:
- Your on-prem Citrix license server must report licensing telemetry data regularly
- Your on-prem Citrix NetScaler Console must report licensing telemetry data regularly
- The version of your Citrix license server cannot be too old
- The license files installed on your Citrix license server cannot contain any expired or inactive perpetual or subscription-based licenses
- The total number of licenses installed on your Citrix license server must not exceed the maximum number of your purchased (active) licenses
| For the sake of completeness: services in Citrix Cloud automatically report licensing telemetry data. |
If one of these requirements is not fulfilled you may be incompliant and your entitlement to Citrix’s support services may be suspended (until you make the necessary changes and fix it).
To prevent this from happening, follow the steps in the section below.
What should I do to remain compliant?
Let’s go through each of the requirements outlined in the previous section and see which steps are needed to ensure you are and remain compliant.
Your on-prem Citrix license server must report licensing telemetry data regularly
The easiest way is to enable automatic reporting. This is enabled by default. Your Citrix license server reports telemetry data every 24 hours. Please make sure that no firewall or proxy is blocking traffic to https://cis.citrix.com/ (port 443, protocol TCP). For more information see the following document:
In case your on-prem Citrix components are in an air-gapped environment or if your license server is not allowed to connect to the internet you must perform a manual update every 90 days.
Automatic or manual reporting has to be done for each Citrix license server in your environment! This includes your pre-production and test environments!
Important -> be aware of obsolete license servers:
And now comes a very important part. You may have Citrix license servers that are considered active by Citrix that you are not aware of! Say what? This is one of the main reasons why many customers are currently incompliant. Let me explain.
In the Citrix licensing portal, when you allocate a license, you allocate it to a particular license server (you must enter a hostname). If this allocated license was never returned (= de-allocated), Citrix considers this license server as active, even if the actual license server has already been decommissioned.
Let’s say, for example, that in 2018 you allocated 1000 CVAD licenses to a Citrix license server with the hostname MyLicenseServer1 running a Windows Server 2016 operating system. In 2020 you replaced this server with a new one with hostname MyLicenseServer2 running Windows Server 2019. In the Citrix portal, you allocated 1000 CVAD to the hostname MyLicenseServer2, but you did not return the 1000 licenses allocated to MyLicenseServer1. Citrix therefore considers that you are running two active Citrix license servers: MyLicenseServer1 and MyLicenseServer2.
This situation is easily solved though. Simply return the licenses allocated to MyLicenseServer1 as described in the section How to return (de-allocate) Citrix licenses. This action will be reflected in Citrix’s internal systems and your compliance status will be adjusted accordingly.
Your on-prem Citrix NetScaler Console must report telemetry data regularly
NetScaler Console is required for the new Flexed licenses for NetScaler included in Citrix’s Univeral Hybrid Multi-Cloud (UL HMC) and Citrix Platform Licenses (CPL) offerings. The same goes for Pooled licenses, which preceded the Flexed licenses. Both Pooled and Flexed licenses can only be assigned to individual NetScaler instances (VPX, MPX, SDX) through NetScaler Console. Pooled and Flexed licenses cannot be assigned directly to an individual NetScaler instance.
Reporting licensing telemetry is required for NetScaler Console: https://docs.netscaler.com/en-us/netscaler-application-delivery-management-software/current-release/ns-telemetry.html
| Note: For both NetScaler Console and NetScaler Console Service license files need to be allocated and downloaded in the MyCitrix licensing portal. The downloaded license files must then be uploaded to the NetScaler Console (Service) instance.
Yes, you read it correctly: even though NetScaler Console Service is a service in Citrix Cloud, you still need to allocate and download two license files (one for the instances and one for the bandwidth) and copy them to NetScaler Console. |
| Note: NetScaler Console Service in Citrix Cloud automatically reports licensing telemetry data. |
The easiest way to report telemetry data is by enabling automatic reporting. This is enabled by default starting from NetScaler Console version 14.1 25.56 or later and 13.1-53.22 or later. Your Citrix NetScaler Console reports telemetry data every 24 hours.
Make sure to adhere to all prerequisites as described here: https://docs.netscaler.com/en-us/netscaler-application-delivery-management-software/current-release/telemetry-modes#automated-telemetry-collection-mode
In case your on-prem Citrix components are in an air-gapped environment or if your Citrix NetScaler Console is not allowed to connect to the internet you must perform a manual update every 90 days.
Automatic or manual reporting has to be done for each Citrix NetScaler Console in your environment! This includes your pre-production and test environments!
The version of your Citrix license server cannot be too old
Your Citrix license server cannot be older than 6 months. At the time of writing, the latest version is 11.17.2 build 51000 from December 2024. Make sure to update your license server to the latest version and establish a process to update it every 6 months.
The license files installed on your Citrix license server cannot contain any expired or inactive perpetual licenses or subscriptions
I have seen some customers mixing their new active UL HMC licenses with older expired perpetual licenses. Even though these perpetual licenses technically still work, their maintenance is expired and cannot be combined with active licenses. From a support perspective, this is, understandably, a no-go.
The same goes for a Citrix license server with only expired perpetual licenses. This is a non-compliant state and does not warrant any support. Having your organization’s best interests at heart, I strongly recommend against running your Citrix environment in such a state.
Make sure to return any inactive and expired licenses as described in the section How to return (de-allocate) Citrix licenses.
Also, remove these inactive and expired license files from your Citrix license server.
The total number of licenses installed on your Citrix license server must not exceed the maximum of your purchased (active) licenses
This may seem logical, but in the field, I see many Citrix license servers with too many license files, exceeding the total number of active Citrix licenses. In many cases, this happens when inactive or expired perpetual licenses are installed next to valid subscription-based licenses.
Make sure to return any inactive, expired, or otherwise invalid licenses as described in the section How to return (de-allocate) Citrix licenses.
Also, remove these inactive and expired license files from your Citrix license server.
How to return (de-allocate) Citrix licenses?
Log on to the Citrix licensing portal using the correct credentials. I recommend using your Citrix user name (= web login ID) instead of your e-mail address. The Citrix user is unique and ensures that you are logging in to the correct OrgID. As a Citrix administrator, you may have access to more than one OrgID.
In the Citrix licensing portal, go to Manage Licenses. Here you find all licenses your organization is entitled to. To use a Citrix license, it has to first be allocated to an on-prem license server. This requires the hostname of the on-prem license server. This allocation is precisely what is being monitored for compliance purposes. As soon as you assign a Citrix license to a hostname, this hostname is considered an active Citrix license server.
The customer has to allocate but also de-allocate (return) Citrix licenses. For example, when a license server becomes obsolete and is replaced with a new one, the licenses assigned to this obsolete license server must be returned. Also, if your license server is currently hosting inactive or expired licenses, these must be returned.
In the Citrix licensing portal, you can look for license allocations based on the hostname (the host ID) of the license server.
Once you identified licenses that need to be returned, select the tick box for each license and in the action menu select Return allocations.
This action will be reflected in Citrix’s internal systems and your compliance status will be adjusted accordingly.
Questions and answers
- Do I need to take steps if my control plane is in Citrix Cloud (= DaaS)?
Yes, you may have to. If you previously had an on-prem CVAD farm you may have to return some older license files. See this section in this article for more information. - I only use my on-prem Citrix license server for XenServer and PVS licensing. Do I need to report telemetry data?
Yes, Citrix licensing telemetry affects all products using the Citrix license server or NetScaler Console.
- Do I need NetScaler Console?
NetScaler Console is required for Pooled and Flexed licenses because these license types cannot be allocated to individual NetScaler instances directly.
- I have licensed my NetScaler instances individually and do not use NetScaler Console on-prem. Am I required to set up NetScaler Console?
No, in this case, you purchased NetScaler fixed bandwidth subscription licenses that are installed on each individual NetScaler instance. - I cannot find the hostname of my old license server in the Manage License section in the MyCitrix portal. What now?
Contact your Citrix account team or partner. They may need to raise this issue at Citrix internally. Another option is to raise a support case. - How often is licensing telemetry data sent when done automatically?
The telemetry upload happens every 24 hours. This applies to both the Citrix license server and NetScaler Console. - Is the Citrix license server an LTSR component?
No, the Citrix license server is not an LTSR component. The latest version can be used in combination with older (supported!) LTSR components. - Does telemetry include user-specific information?
No, the information collected through telemetry, such as email addresses, user names, and IP addresses, is securely pseudonymized or scrambled.- Citrix license server (search for the word “scrambled”): https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/licensing/current-release/license-server/citrix-licensing-telemetry/citrix-license-server-data-elements
- NetScaler Console (search for the word “pseudonymised”): https://docs.netscaler.com/en-us/netscaler-console-service/ns-telemetry-service#prerequisites
- The End-User License Agreement (EULA) does not state that licensing telemetry is mandatory
Yes it does, but you have to follow the document links:- Section 2.8 in the EULA describes the Business Unit Terms. In this section, you find a link to the Citrix business terms (PDF file).
- Item 2 in this PDF file (“Cloud Software Group Business Unit Terms”) contains a link that describes the Citrix support programs (PDF file).
- In the section Legal Disclaimers and Program Terms you find a link to Citrix’s Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide (Citrix article).
- In the Citrix article Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide, you find a link to the World Wide Service Guide – 2024 (Citrix article). The section License Compliance explains the licensing telemetry rules.
If you still have questions after reading this article, please leave me a message in the comment section below. If you feel that something is missing, please leave me a message in the comment section below.
Dennis Span works as a Principal Account Technology Strategist at Cloud Software Group in Vienna, Austria. He holds multiple Citrix certifications (CCE-V). Dennis has been a Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA) since 2017 (+ one year as Citrix Technology Professional, CTP). Besides his interest in virtualization technologies and blogging, he loves spending time with his family as well as snowboarding, playing basketball, and rowing. He is fluent in Dutch, English, German, and Slovak and speaks some Spanish.
