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I have a problem with a a particular licensed software that I have installed on a VM, and the software license should be tie to a public IP address on the NIC of the VM.

The software checks the IP address of the server where the application is installed and verifies against the public license server of the application manufacturer, and if the IP address doesn't match, the software stops working.

The software company has issue temporary license to my VM using private IP address, since I wasn't able to have a public static IP on my NIC, but I have to change that license every month, since is not safe for the software company to issue a license with a private IP.

I read on several discussion groups that is not possible to assign an public IP address to NIC, but is there anyway to circumvent this obstacle and for some means make the VM verify the public IP address is configured on the NIC?

The way I have it working today, with the hassle of renewing the license for my private ip address every month, is with the VM NIC with the private ip address and the VM assigned a public static IP address. The application works, but in terms of licensing it's been a pain and I am at the mercy of the software company.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Ivan Peñalosa
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  • I find myself surprised at this requirement. Even in my own home, my NIC associated IP address is 192.168.x.x and hence a LAN address. What kind of software has a license check that it is directly attached to the Internet? I'm personally curious about the nature of such software. Would it be permissible to name the product? – Kolban Oct 07 '19 at 14:11
  • we already addressed this question in the following [doc](https://serverfault.com/questions/970222/gcp-compute-engine-with-public-on-its-nic). I don't think that this is feasible for now and as per "John Hanley". A licensing strategy based upon a system's NIC address (IP or MAC) is a technical support nightmare" – Milad Tabrizi Oct 07 '19 at 22:08

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In most clouds, IBM Cloud is an exception, the VM NIC does not actually have a public IP address bound to it nor can you do so. The public IP address is bound to the public side of a one-to-one NAT which translates from the public Internet to the internal VPC.

This is my option: the software vendor needs to update its licensing strategy, which uses a simple, immature and problematic licensing strategy. Most companies are not able to assign public IP addresses to computer systems except for necessary external facing systems. For enterprise systems, inline firewalls will prevent even external systems from having public IP addresses. A licensing strategy based upon a system's NIC address (IP or MAC) is a technical support nightmare.

John Hanley
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  • I apologize for the delayed response. I am revisiting this topic again The VoIP Softswitch provider of the same issue on 2019, sent to me their new version, but it is having media voip packet problems (packet loss). The vendor insists that my environment is the problem and I should have a public IP address directly on the NIC of the server. Is today still non-sense request? I have several other Voip servers on GCP working perfectly. Thank you so much for your help. – Ivan Peñalosa May 08 '23 at 11:59
  • @IvanPeñalosa - They are wrong in most virtualized environments, but not all. Google Cloud VMs do not have public IP addresses bound to virtual machine NICs. Your vendor is either very small, out of date with technology (network virtualization) or so specialized that they do not have customers in Google Cloud. Given how significant the cloud is today, I am surprised they do not want to work with you to solve this for future customers. You could request support (paid) from Google and then provide the results to the vendor. – John Hanley May 08 '23 at 16:30