On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 03:03:53PM -0000, Bob Flynn wrote:
> I have a question regarding the relationship between clients defined in
> networker and networkers use of client licenses.
> 
>  
> 
> Specifically;
> 
>  
> 
> If I have an old client, which is not longer being backed up, i.e. its
> not in any active group. Does this count against client licenses?

Yes, or at least that's how that works for normal client licenses.  The
more advanced addons may have other licensing restrictions/assignments.


> I have a new client, it required a client license. I can delete down an
> old client which is not in any group, but is there simply for reference.
> From this I assume that simply configuring a client is sufficient to
> talk a client license, whether it is active or not ?

That's correct.  However, removing the client configuration instance
doesn't remove or otherwise affect what backups have already been done.
If you're only keeping the client around for potential restores, or
continuity with older backups should the client reactivate, you can
remove the configuration instance and get the license back.

The trick to doing this is recording the "client id" for the client
before you remove it from backups.  In the nwadmin GUI, you need to turn
on View / Details to see this field.  If you have a bunch of clients
(say you remove them in batches when you need to add a new client and
all your licenses are in use,) you can script dump it out of nsradmin.
(You could probably remove the clients with the same script, but I
prefer to do that manually.)

Later, if you need to restore or access that client as it was, create a
new client with the same name and input the same client id _when you
create it._  (It's the only time you get to edit the client id.)  A very
similar procedure is used in modern versions of Networker to rename a
client.

This probably leaves dangling index files.  I don't overly worry about
this because I'm not hurting for diskspace on the server, and clients I
remove have most of their data well aged out of indexes.  I have another
script somewhere that compares the index directory with the client list
and reports on descrepancies (and sizes) but I can't seem to find it
right now.

Dave

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