The message on the Licence Server suggests it is good for me to upgrade from 5.3.0 to 5.4.0 but the message is ambiguous to me.
Will me upgrading to 5.4.0 remove the need for my Dongle ?
I’m perfectly happy using my Dongle and prefer it - I do not want to rely on Online Licensing.
Can I upgrade to 5.4.0 and continue to make use of my Dongle ? Or does the upgrade make my dongle redundant ?
Please advise.
Thank you.
Yes, you can upgrade. 5.4.0 allows you to migrate the license from the dongle to your online account, but it’s voluntary and you have to manually initiate the migration if you want to do so. Apart from the migration feature 5.4.0 has some minor UI improvements compared to 5.3.0
That’s OK for now at least, but you should have in mind that we’re moving away from dongles and we won’t be supporting future major V-Ray version licenses on dongles.
That being said, online licensing has undergone significant improvements in the last year, so it should serve your needs without having to sacrifice performance.
Hi Ivan,
Thank you for your reply.
Just so that I am clear - can I upgrade to 5.4.0 and still keep using my Dongle ? As I do not want to rely on online licencing.
I appreciate that eventually Chaos want to go all online and us to be dongle-less but I wish to delay that move until I absolutely have to.
Please confirm.
Many thanks.
Yes, you can do that.
I am not happy with this. During the C-crisis a lot of local providers are having a hard time keeping their act together, resulting in several times having me offline, which gave me problems with several licenses. So, as good as you think your online service will be, you can’t control every provider!!! Performance is the least of my problems!!
If you need to use your licenses offline, or just want to be protected against internet outages you can borrow the licenses for offline usage - Chaos Licensing
Even if there are no machines to get online!?!?!
I’m not sure I understand what’s your setup, can you explain a bit further? Is your license server completely offline, or it is usually online but you want to protect yourself against eventual internet outages?
In a normal case my license server would be online all the time. The recent problems I had was that I suddenly had no internet, phone and TV connection for almost 3 days!!! I understand that I can “borrow” the license BEFORE this happens when you can still be online. But what if you are in the MIDDLE of something like this, without any connection? How does the “borrowing” work when there is no online connedtion at all?
This is why I’m very very reluctant to move away from a Dongle. I’ve used mine for 12 years. Never had a Dongle issue, not once.
If it means I can’t upgrade to the next version of V-Ray because it’s online only, I may just stick with what I’ve got.
The *only* time I’ve ever had an issue with a subscription service where the software company’s licencing server went down, was with Marvelous Designer, a piece of software I use very sparingly. But risk that with V-Ray ? It’s not worth the risk to me.
If your license is borrowed it will continue working even in case the internet connection goes down at some point. Basically, when you borrow a license the license information is reserved on the computer the license is borrowed on and is accessible offline.
Borrowed licenses renew themselves automatically once there is an internet connection for 2 week periods. Additionally, license servers 5.3.0 and later versions have a grace period that will protect you from short network outages, so your licenses will work for a couple of hours even if not borrowed in case your internet connection goes down.
I’m interested in this too as I’ve always used dongles and that let me feel safe .
my question is about the automatic renew , does this happen at the end of every 2 weeks? or from the last time I had internet connection? because if the answer is the first one then with someone who have really bad luck like me internet connection could go down just before the end of 2 weeks and I wouldn’t be able to renew .
Just last week I had 24 hours without internet because of the maintenance by my internet provider and that could happen again .
I know you are trying to find the balance between a loose licence system that make users comfortable and strict one to make it harder for the illegal users to workaround it , and I’m on your side but I need to make sure I can do my work too .
That’s go without saying I love you guys I’m sure you wouldn’t make such move without finding the best reliable way to do it ! 
Thank you !
It starts trying to renew the licenses a couple of days before they expire and tries until it succeeds or the licenses expire. I usually use my 4G as a backup Internet connection, so even if everything else fails I’ll be able to connect to the internet and borrow the licenses.
That being said - if you need advice on a particular setup - just mail us at support@chaosgroup.com and we’ll be able to recommend a solution.
As an answer to my question (when I would NOT have previously borrowed the license), these couple of hours would be the only time I get in the three days of my failing internet connection?
Yes. If you have no internet connection, no chance to get connected temporarily to borrow the license (via mobile hotspot etc), or no way to borrow from a different machine, and transfer the file with the license information (via flash drive for example), you’ll get only the couple of hours.
Because I’m still dongle based, I’m still a little unclear how online licencing works.
Say if I have kicked off a network render to work overnight to render my animation frames - I go to bed, and am looking forward to seeing all my render frames completed in the morning.
If there was a licencing issue during the night, is there a possibility that I could find that my 1000 frames didn’t complete because the rendering stopped due to not being able to verify licences ?
Or are you saying that to prevent something like that happening I would need to have to borrow the licences before I start the overnight renders and leaving them running overnight ?
It’s quite similar with the dongle licencing, the only difference is that instead of a dongle your licences are associated with your account (email or username can be used for logging into the license server). The licence server software then obtains license information over the internet from our backend.
Yes, if you have a licensce issue frames that start rendering after a potential problem won’t render.
If the issue is overnight you should still be OK since the license server will allow you to use licenses with some grace period, but if you have licence issues for a longer period, e.g. over a weekend - you’d need your licenses borrowed previously.
Generally speaking - if your setup is 1 license server computer + certain number оf workstations/ RN computers - you can borrow the licences on the license server computer and leave them that way - they’ll be available offline if needed.
This is a helpful thread! So as long as you are always using one machine to run V-Ray - there’s no downside to having a license “borrowed” all the time? I haven’t upgraded from a dongle either, and have had these concerns in the back of my mind too.
I’d say - as long as you’re using a single license server machine - there’s no downside to having a license “borrowed” all the time. You can have a lot of computers with V-Ray installed that obtain licenses from a single license server computer, which is a typical studio setup.
You can see some example setups here - Chaos Licensing
Very helpful examples. Thanks!