I need to create a software license key, and one of the requirement is to bound the key to a particular server, to avoid image duplication. 1. what is the preferred way to achieve this task (CPU, MAC, other) ? 2. Can it be achieved on virtual machines?
Extra credits for to cross-platform approaches :)
The tricky thing is to find a unique key determined by the above, with some reduncancy. I.e. to allow that either CPU(s), MAC or harddisk is replaced, but not all of them. Actually, CPU-ID is less likely to change as MAC and harddisk, so it is more suitable. It can be acchieved on virtual machines, although virtual machines can also clone these IDs. In that case you may want to combine an active license with a single internet based server which validates the activity; this way if VM's are cloned, only one can be active.