1. Introduction
If you use one of the commercial editions (beyond the scope of the 'Free' license status), you are required to regularly provide Checkmk GmbH/Inc. with an overview of Checkmk usage within your company.
Once you have completed the initial setup — and, in the case of Checkmk Ultimate variants, after the license has been activated at the end of the trial period (license status 'Trial') — Checkmk can completely handle the rest of this administrative work for you. We therefore recommend — whenever possible — using this online verification.
Checkmk collects the current service metrics for all connected Checkmk sites at a random time each day. These are displayed clearly and transparently in the license usage report.
Checkmk stores this information for a period of 400 days. Older data is removed.
As a Checkmk administrator, you leave all communication with the Checkmk customer portal entirely to Checkmk, both for licensing and for transmitting usage information. Only if this is technically impossible for you — e.g., because the system on which your Checkmk runs is not allowed to have internet connection — do you have to carry out the communication offline (manually).
2. Obtaining licensing credentials from the customer portal
In any case, you must first obtain the licensing credentials that you will then enter into Checkmk.
To do this, open the Checkmk Customer Portal. Log in there with your credentials to generate the Licensing Credentials, which you will need to enter in Checkmk in the next step.
Note: When you purchased a Checkmk edition, you received the login credentials for the Checkmk customer portal. If you do not have them (anymore), please contact the Checkmk Sales.
Select your license. The view will then look like this, for example:
Note: If you do not see the highlighted buttons, your user account may not have the appropriate permissions in the Checkmk customer portal. In this case, please contact the administrator responsible for license renewal at your company.
Now click Generate Licensing Credentials to initiate the password generation process. First, you will see a security notice that you must confirm by clicking Generate & Show Credentials:
After that, the Licensing ID and Password will be displayed:
Copy both and close this window by clicking Done.
3. Licensing Checkmk Pro
When you start using Checkmk Pro, you’ll initially only activate your license. The transmission of usage data just begins at the end of the first licensing phase.
3.1. Entering license information in Checkmk
As a Checkmk administrator, open Setup > Maintenance > Licensing. The page will remain blank until license information has been entered.
Open the Edit settings page via the Settings link:
Now choose whether you want to submit your license information online or offline. We recommend using the online submission option. This will allow Checkmk to help you submit your license information more easily. For online submission, fill in the fields Licensing ID and Password with the information from the customer portal.
If you are using a proxy, you can use the setting Auto-detect proxy settings for this network. If you want or need to specify a proxy explicitly instead, for example, because your company requires the use of a dedicated corporate proxy for this data flow, select Globally configured proxy and enter the information for your HTTP proxy in the global settings.
Finally, click Save to save your settings.
3.2. Submit information online
As a user of Checkmk Pro, you can have Checkmk conveniently transmit your license usage information to Checkmk GmbH/Inc. via online communication. Only if the Checkmk server in your company cannot access the Checkmk customer portal for technical reasons you need to submit the data offline.
Your license information is transparently available for you to view at any time. The information displayed on the License usage and Edit settings pages is used.
The Licensing credentials must have been stored in Checkmk before the first transmission (see Enter licensing data in Checkmk).
If you have chosen to submit the data online (the corresponding button is active), click on Submit license usage online. Checkmk will take care of the rest, and you won’t have to do anything else for the entire duration of the license. After each successful submission, you will receive a confirmation and a summary of the submitted information. This will look something like this, for example:
You have now successfully submitted the usage data for the first license phase to Checkmk GmbH/Inc.
From now on, Checkmk will regularly report your current license usage to Checkmk GmbH/Inc. As part of this process, Checkmk will also automatically retrieve new license information from the Checkmk customer portal if you have expanded or renewed your license in the meantime.
You can initiate a resynchronization of your data with the Checkmk customer portal at any time by clicking the Submit license usage online button.
3.3. Submitting information offline
It is also possible to manually upload your license usage information to the customer portal. However, since this is more time-consuming, we recommend that you only use this option if you are required to do so for technical reasons.
To do so, open Setup > Maintenance > Licensing.
After clicking the 
Submit license usage offline button, you will be taken to the following page:
Follow the instructions on this page. Download the required data from Checkmk. Next, upload the corresponding file to the customer portal. Then upload the response file you receive to Checkmk to complete the process.
Please note that in a distributed monitoring environment, you must perform both submissions to the customer portal and submissions from the customer portal not only on the central site but also on all remote sites. In the case of distributed monitoring with central setup, the entire licensing process is handled via the central site.
3.4. Distributed monitoring and license transmission
In a distributed monitoring setup, the license information for all connected sites is collected and transmitted to Checkmk via the central site. It is therefore sufficient to store the license information — as described above — in the central site’s global settings.
4. Licensing Checkmk Ultimate
Once the trial period has expired, you must submit a verification request to the Checkmk customer portal at the start of the first licensing phase and obtain a valid license ID. Enter the license ID in Checkmk. This licenses your Checkmk Ultimate or Checkmk Ultimate with Multi-Tenancy and activates it for further use.
For Checkmk Ultimate, this naturally applies only if you have exceeded the limits of the 'Free' license status. Otherwise, you can continue to use your site with the 'Free' license status without restriction and without needing to perform licensing.
4.1. Entering license information in Checkmk
As a Checkmk administrator, open Setup > Maintenance > Licensing. The page will remain blank until license information has been entered.
Use the Edit settings button to open the page of the same name:
Now choose whether you want to submit the license information online or offline. We recommend using online submission, since then Checkmk can handle all further licensing activities for you. For online submission, fill in the fields Licensing ID and Password with the information from the customer portal.
If you are using a proxy, you can use the setting Auto-detect proxy settings for this network. If you want or need to specify a proxy explicitly instead, for example, because your company requires the use of a dedicated corporate proxy for this data flow, select Globally configured proxy and enter the information for your HTTP proxy in the global settings.
Finally, click Save to save your settings.
4.2. Automatic online submission of usage information
As a user of one of the Checkmk Ultimate variants, you can have Checkmk conveniently transmit your license usage information to Checkmk GmbH/Inc. via online communication. Only if for technical reasons the Checkmk server in your organization cannot connect to the Checkmk customer portal you need to submit the data offline.
Your license information is always transparently available for you to view. The information displayed on the License usage and Edit settings pages is used.
The licensing data must have been entered in Checkmk before the first transmission (see Enter licensing data in Checkmk).
If you have chosen online transmission, the necessary data will be automatically transferred when you save, and you will receive a success message in Checkmk.
Your Checkmk Ultimate has now been activated for licensed use.
From now on, Checkmk will regularly report your current license usage to Checkmk GmbH/Inc. After each successful transmission, you will see a confirmation and a summary of the information sent. As part of this process, Checkmk will also automatically retrieve new license information from the Checkmk customer portal if you have expanded or renewed your license in the meantime.
You can trigger a resynchronization of your data with the Checkmk customer portal at any time by clicking the Online verification button.
4.3. Submitting information offline
It is also possible to manually upload your license usage information to the customer portal. However, since this is more time-consuming, we recommend that you only use this option if you are required to do so for technical reasons.
To do so, open Setup > Maintenance > Licensing.
After clicking the Offline verification button, you will be taken to the following page:
Follow the instructions on this page. Download the required data from Checkmk. Next, upload the corresponding file to the customer portal. Then upload the response file you receive to Checkmk to complete the process.
Please note that in a distributed monitoring setup, you must perform both transmissions to the customer portal and transmissions from the customer portal not only on the central site but also on all remote sites. In the case of a distributed monitoring with central setup, the entire licensing process is handled via the central site.
4.4. Distributed monitoring and license transmission
In a distributed monitoring setup, the license information for all connected sites is collected and transmitted to Checkmk via the central site. Since all your sites are initially in trial mode, you can—within this time window—enter the licenses one by one after setting up the distributed monitoring.
4.5. License verification
What happens when your license’s usage period is nearing its end? This triggers a sequence of different escalation levels. As soon as a new license has been uploaded, the escalation system will be stopped.
Only the license’s validity period is checked during this process. At the same time, your monitoring will continue as usual, and notifications will be sent out regularly. However, the ability to activate changes will be blocked in the event of a violation of the agreed-upon license guidelines. Exceeding the currently-licensed number of services and modules, on the other hand, will simply be recorded and billed retroactively with the next invoice.
If your Checkmk is in a blocked state, please contact Checkmk Sales, who can assist you further.
5. Displaying license usage information
Checkmk begins displaying license-related information in the form of a color-coded chart as soon as your license becomes active.
Once the license management has been running for at least two full days, you will see a chart like this:
The different colored elements allow you to see the following:
The red line shows the currently contractually agreed-upon license limit. This makes it easy to identify sites in which the number of services exceeds the limit.
The light blue line shows the average number of services per month. This smooths out spikes caused, for example, by a misconfiguration.
The dark blue line shows the total number of monitored services across all connected sites for each day.
The green bar shows the average number of services in the current month.
The yellow bar shows the first month in which the license limit was exceeded.
The purple bar shows the month with the highest license overage.
The table below this chart provides an overview of the services and hosts as reported to Checkmk GmbH:
Licensing distinguishes between:
Licensable services / Hosts |
Number of services or hosts used to determine the license size. |
Excluded services / Hosts |
Services or hosts that are not included in the license size calculation. These are intended for sites used to test new features, configuration changes, or similar aspects of Checkmk. To mark services or hosts as excluded, set labels of the type |
Shadow services / Hosts |
Services or hosts that are automatically created as shadow services or hosts for technical reasons. They are not included in the license calculation. |
Cloud services / Hosts |
Cloud-based services or hosts that are used to determine the size of the license calculation. |