Not Happy - "Your licence needs to be transferred"

[Pancakes]

I just recently moved over my Pool from my old Windows Server 2012 R2 VM, to my new Windows Server 2016 VM

 

I left the old fileserver on, because I need to move over a lot of other configurations and scheduled tasks etc

 

I moved the pool over, running the Trial on the new system. It imports perfectly, and I reboot to make sure my BitLocker Auto-Unlock is working

 

Then I work on getting the shares all back in order, but for some reason I can't write to any folder. Only read. Then I realize I can't on the host system either

 

I just spend probably 2 hours trying to figure out why the file permissions were not working right, I took ownership of around 30TB of data, which took forever. 

 

After none of this working, I am convinced the whole thing is screwed, and my best option would be to start removing disks from the pool, formatting them and starting a new pool and moving my data over while not copying the permissions

 

Thats when I open DrivePool to do it, and it won't let me do anything without transferring my licence, so I do it and now everything works.

 

Could you guys make it say that FROM THE START, or give some kind of notification? I just reset every single permissions and wasted a whole bunch of time, when I could have just transferred the licence in about two seconds

 

Taking data hostage over a licence (Even though I had 29 days trial left!) is a quick way to get people to move to another solution 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, the "Transfer" state should only pop up when a significant hardware change has occurred (as well as changing the system name).   

 

But it should definitely be prompting you. There should be some sort of on screen notification about the software needing your attention due to the licensing state.  

 

However, we'll look into this, and verify that it's something that's clear, and obvious. 

[Pancakes]

Okay, that must be what got me

 

I renamed it from FS01-V2 to FS01, however it never gave me any prompts anywhere. I never opened the DrivePool application because I didn't think there was any reason to

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yeah, that would trigger that. 

 

But it really should give you a notification.... 

 

And I've tested this, it should definitely have flagged this for you. 

 

However, maybe we should make this a more aggressive notification. 

 

https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/27502

[Pancakes]

Alright this whole "License Transfer" is getting old for me now. I just upgraded my ESXi host from ESXi 5.5 to 6.5 and upgraded the VM Version at the same time

 

Not only did it not tell me about the license (but obviously I now knew to go look), but it also REMOVED all the shares that were on the pool... I never noticed this the first time because it was a new host anyway and had no shares

 

I hoped that once I transferred the licensed they would come back, but nope. So I had to go back and re-create all my shares. Why on earth does it do this? Its worth noting that the shares that were not on the pool were completely unaffected

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, the change from ESX versions and the VM version would definitely trigger this to occur, as the BIOS information will definitely change.  

 

 

That said, I've tested this, and it absolutely should be producing a notification on the system.  If it's not, make sure that "DrivePool.Notifications.exe" is running on the system.  If it's not, then that is why. 

 

Otherwise, I can reliably reproduce the issue, but it always shows the notification.  

 

 

 

As for the "no shares" thing, that is not normal.  As long as the pool shows up, the share should as well.  Period.  If it's not, then this is likely an issue with the "Server" service, and not with the pool itself.   In fact, if the pool doesn't show up ... once it shows back up, the shares will "reappear" automatically. 

 

So I couldn't even being to comment about why this would happen, because it's absolutely bizarre that it would happen in the first place. 

 

At worse, restarting the system or restarting the "Server" service (aka, "lanmanserver") should fix this issue, as well.  If not, then ... there may be something wrong with your installation.  And in that case, running "sfc /scannow" and/or the "dism" "/check-health" commands may be a good idea.