Licensing and Features

StifleR uses license keys to unlock features, and lets administrators enable or disable individual features without re-entering a key. This document covers how to obtain and apply a license, what the available features are, and how to troubleshoot common problems.

Overview

StifleR licensing has two layers:

1. License keys — cryptographically signed keys issued by 2Pint Software. Each license key contains three things: one or more product codes that determine which features it unlocks, the number of clients the license covers, and an expiry date.

2. Feature management — once a feature is unlocked by a license key, administrators can enable or disable it from the dashboard without changing the key.

When the StifleR Service starts, it validates every installed license key. Each valid key unlocks one or more features. Feature management then combines those unlocked features with the administrator's on/off toggles — and, for the DeployR Community edition, the most recent Online Services heartbeat result — to produce the set of features that are currently enabled. The resulting state is what is shown on the Licenses and Features pages in the dashboard.

Always-included features

Three features are always active regardless of licensing: Administration, Devices, and Networks (collectively called PlatformR). These cannot be disabled. ---

Features at a glance

Feature	What it covers
Administration	License management, feature toggles, user and role administration, server health
Devices	Client device management, elevation data, SRUM data
Networks	Areas, locations, network groups, networks
BandwidthManagement	Throttling policies, BranchCache and Delivery Optimization settings, traffic visibility
CacheManagement	Cache usage reporting
OsdDeployments	OSD task sequences, Autopilot, generic deployments
DeployR	Full DeployR integration — task sequences, boot images, application and OS content
CacheR	CacheR distribution points, packages, tracked content
RemoteR	Remote tools — file explorer, registry viewer, WMI viewer, event logs, performance counters, remote assistance, RDP, and more
MOM	MOM integration

Installation and prerequisites

Obtaining a key

Contact 2Pint Software or your reseller to obtain a license key.

Applying a key

1. Open the StifleR Config Editor on the server running the StifleR Service.

2. Navigate to General Settings.

3. Enter the key in the License Keys field.

4. If you have multiple keys (for example, a separate CacheR key alongside a StifleR key), add each additional key to the License Keys list.

5. Save and restart the StifleR Service.

The service validates all keys at startup. Duplicate keys (case-insensitive) are deduplicated automatically.

Online license validation

The DeployR Community edition (product code DC) is the only license type that requires online validation. The StifleR Service must be able to reach the 2Pint Online Services endpoint at https://api.service.2pintsoftware.com at least once per hour — see Online Services heartbeat for the grace-period behaviour. All other license types are validated locally on the server and do not require any outbound connectivity for licensing. ---

Dashboard pages

Licenses page

Navigate to Administration > Licenses in the dashboard to view the Licenses page. The page shows:

• A table listing each installed license with columns: Name, Type, Expires on, Nodes, and Days left.

• The last Online Services heartbeat result — time of the last successful contact with 2Pint Online Services, and any error if the last attempt failed.

• A summary of connected clients compared against licensed node counts.

Features page

Navigate to Administration > Features in the dashboard to view the Features page. The page shows:

• A table listing every known feature with columns: Name, Licensed, Enabled, License type, Expiration, Nodes, and Disabled reason.

• Toggle buttons for each licensed, non-always-included feature. Clicking a toggle opens a confirmation dialog and then enables or disables the feature immediately.

Changes take effect instantly. The always-included features (Administration, Devices, Networks) do not have toggle buttons and cannot be disabled. ---

Online Services heartbeat

The DeployR Community edition requires a successful heartbeat to 2Pint Online Services at least once per hour for its features to remain enabled. This is checked continuously while the service is running.

Grace period: If the heartbeat cannot be reached, features remain enabled for up to 1 hour after the last successful contact. If the outage exceeds 1 hour, the DeployR feature is disabled until connectivity is restored.

At startup: If no heartbeat has ever succeeded, the 1-hour grace period starts from service start time.

Mixed keys: If you have two license keys installed — one with the DeployR Community and another with DeployR Enterprise — the heartbeat requirement does not apply; the standard key exempts the feature from online validation.

To check the current heartbeat status, go to the Licenses page in the dashboard — it shows the time of the last successful contact and any error from the most recent attempt. ---

Disabled reasons

The Disabled reason column on the Features page explains why a licensed feature is not currently active. The possible reasons are:

Disabled reason	Meaning
License expired	The covering license key has passed its expiry date.
License tampering detected	The license key signature does not validate — the key may have been modified.
Online services connection required	DeployR Community edition; the last successful Online Services heartbeat was more than 1 hour ago.
Disabled by administrator	An administrator toggled this feature off on the Features page.

Permissions

Viewing and managing licenses and features requires Administration permissions.