Moving from on-prem Zoo to Cloud Zoo - License upgrade considerations

Hello, we have 95 Rhino 8 licenses that have been bought as upgrades to Rhino 7. I’m not sure if it matters or not but some of those Rhino 7 licenses will have been upgrades to previous versions going back to Rhino 6, 5 and even 4.

At the moment we’re still using Rhino 7 with an on-prem Zoo server. Rhino 8 has not been rolled out yet.

We want to move to the Cloud Zoo but when we do, we want to be able to use both Rhino 7 and 8.

What’s the best way to go about this?

Do I just add the Rhino 8 license and it will pull the the underlying Rhino 7 license with it? Or do I need to remove the corresponding Rhino 7 license from the on-prem Zoo server first?

When I go to add an upgraded Rhino 8 license to the Cloud Zoo, does it recognise that it’s an upgraded license and then prompts for the Rhino 7 code, or do I have to add them both separately?

Thank you.

Hi
The V7 and V8 licenses will need to be Deleted from your LAN Zoo while it has an Internet connection, so the license validations can be returned to us.

Your original licenses and upgrades have all been linked on our servers, so you should not be asked for any previous version license keys. If you are asked, please stop and call Seattle Licensing & Sales at 206 545-7000.

Before you start deleting licenses from your LAN Zoo, MAKE SURE you have all of the V8 and V7 license keys written down, as you will need them when you add them to the license Team.

Once the licenses are moved to the Team, your user will need to create account logins using their company email addresses.
They can do that on the Rhino Web page by clicking on the “Sign in” link.
Ask them to do this first to avoid confusion.

After they have created their login, you, as the Team “Owner” will go into the Team management tools, and send invitations to those addresses. You can add multiple addresses to those message.
The users will need to open the message and click on the link accepting the invitation,
You will then get an email message confirming their acceptance.

To switch to using a Team license, the user will start Rhino and it will gripe it can not contact the old LAN Zoo. They should click Yes, to choose another option, then click the Login link. When they complete the login, Rhino will get a Team license and start.

Does ALL OF THAT make sense?

Hello John, thanks for the prompt response and yes, it does make perfect sense.

@brian @bobmcneel
98 times??? That’s nearly $100,000 worth of licenses. Makes no sense to me. Sounds like something McNeel should do for the customer or else pay the customer to do.

But then I only have one license to worry about, and standalone at that, so maybe its none of my business.

1 Like

There are now multi-user license keys available in 10- 50- and 100-user quantities. McNeel will help replace existing individual customer keys with multi-user keys (for free) if the customer so desires. The process does take some time and could cause some minor disruptions, as the original keys need to be taken out of service and invalidated before they are replaced with a multi-user key.

I was aware of the multi-user license keys but the upgrade was ordered by someone who may not have been aware that option was available.

Also, we can’t afford any downtime and I suspect that the license conversion cannot be done outside of regular working hours. If it is possible to do that conversion outside of regular working hours then we would be interested. I created a post about it here: Bulk license upload for Cloud Zoo - Consolidation of licenses

It’s not ideal but perhaps we should have moved to the multi-user licenses when we were less busy. Less busy is not something we are going to be for a while though…

The steps I listed are accurate for anyone shifting from LAN Zoo to Cloud Zoo Team licensing.

That was the purpose of my detailed reply, in hopes that the NEXT person doing this will find these steps and avoid downtime and confusion.

As Helvetosaur accurately points out, for customers with large numbers of licenses, there are options to consolidate multiple licenses into single keys to make this less painful.

I guess the best thing is to contact McNeel sales directly and see what the possibilities are…

1 Like

Consolidating multiple single computer licenses into multiple computer licenses requires a coordinated process with your regions Licensing & Sales people, so yes, this is a “business hours” task.

The process of shifting from LAN Zoo 7 or 8 to Cloud Zoo Teams only needs assistance if you don’t follow the steps in order, or run into problems that were not anticipated.

I generally recommend shifting a few licenses over and getting them successfully in use instead of one big switch all at once. Avoiding the chance of a company wide Rhino production shutdown is always a good idea.

1 Like