What type of licensing you get and how you activate it depends on whether you purchased your vFabric product(s) standalone or as part of a vFabric 5 package (Standard or Advanced). Production licensing in both cases requires a license key. A license key is an alphanumeric sequence of 25 characters that encodes details of the associated product, the license expiration date, the license capacity, and other information.
How Licensing Works with Standalone vFabric Components
How Licensing Works with vFabric Standard and vFabric Advanced
Using the vFabric License Check Tool
If you purchase a vFabric 5 component individually, rather than as part of a vFabric Standard or Advanced package, you install license keys locally, on one or more physical or virtual machines. Local licensing does not involve integration with vCenter and the vFabric License Server. It allows you to install and run the product on physical as well as virtual machines.
To license a vFabric product on an individual basis, refer to the documentation for that product. Each product implements licensing in a slightly different way. To check the validity of a license key, see Using the vFabric License Check Tool.