Good licensing model for the cloud?

Question

We have a web server application hosted on Tomcat, and we have a license model that allows our customers to request a license (which sends us a license file with the MAC addresses of the machine they requested it to) and as soon as we confirm that they paid their bills (manual process), we send them a license file that will only work on the machine to which the MAC address is attached.

This works well, but we are now considering creating an AMI so that our customers can use our product on AWS and also make it easier for customers to test our product (since installation is not required with AMI).

However, when you stop / start an instance on AWS, it loses its MAC address .
We are happy to change our license model, but my question is: what parameters, except for the MAC address that I have for checking our product, are licensed?

• Let me know if you need more information through comments.

Answer 1

Why do not you issue certificates?

This is a process (automated way), I think.

• You issue a certificate to install them.
• Your application calls the service for verification.
• Your service accepts or denies.

You can do this manually to have a short certificate that the application must verify before starting. This will be a license and can be tied to a specific instance.

Answer 2

Can you use AWA Paid AMI? http://aws.amazon.com/articles/866

Alternatively, the application can be configured with specific credentials (for example, order number + email address or customer number + email address) that are used to obtain authorization from your remote server at restart and periodically after that. Obviously, there must be some hysteresis time in order to ensure fault tolerance, avoiding duplication of machines operating under the same license.

Answer 3

If you use Amazon EC 2, you can replace the MAC address validation with the Amazon instance ID. Check out this post to explain how to get it: Find out the instance ID from ec2