Configure an ADM server only as the pooled license server

Last published : Sep 21, 2026
Important:
File based licensing system (also referred to as manually managed entitlements), traditionally used for activating various on-premises components, will be End of Life (EOL) on April 15, 2026. License Activation Service (LAS) is the next generation technology for product activations across the suite of Citrix products. LAS will be the only way to activate and license NetScaler instances after April 15, 2026, supporting NetScaler Flexed licenses (CPL/UHMC), legacy NetScaler Pooled licenses, and NetScaler Fixed term Bandwidth licenses. To remain supported, your NetScaler and NetScaler Console deployments must be on a LAS compatible version.
The minimum required NetScaler® versions that are LAS compatible are:
  • NetScaler ADCs: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x, 13.1-37.246 (FIPS), 14.1-66.68 (FIPS)
  • NetScaler SVM: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x
  • NetScaler Console Service: will support LAS from early September.
All the other forms of legacy NetScaler licenses such as Pooled vCPU, CICO, perpetual will not be supported with LAS. NetScaler instances leveraging perpetual licenses without an active maintenance will become unlicensed upon upgrade to the above mentioned software versions.
LAS based licenses may not be available to customers where prohibited by law or regulations.
If you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care. Citrix may limit or suspend your Citrix Maintenance for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements don’t apply where prohibited by law or regulation.
As an administrator, you can configure an ADM server only as the pooled license server. With this configuration, the ADM server only receives licensing data from ADC instances.
Sometimes, you might have the regulatory mandate that requires restricting ADC instances’ data from leaving the regulatory zone. In such situations, you can deploy a local instance of an ADM on-prem server in your regulatory zone to use management, monitoring, and analytics capabilities. When you follow the same approach to use the pooled licenses feature, you have to split pooled licenses across various ADM license servers. This approach does not provide you the flexibility to allocate pooled licenses across your globally deployed ADC instances.
Therefore, configure the ADM server only as the pooled license server. The ADM server receives only licensing data from all ADC instances. So, you can adhere to the regulatory mandate and dynamically allocate pooled capacity licenses across globally deployed ADC instances.
This document explains how to configure an ADM server only as the pooled license server.
Related information

How to configure an ADM server only as the pooled license server

Before you begin, ensure no ADC instances are added to an ADM server. Add the ADC instances only after you complete step 4.
Do the following to configure an ADM server only for the pooled license server:
  1. Navigate to Settings > Administration.
  2. In the System Configurations section, select System Deployment.
  3. In ADM Deployment, select ADM only as a pooled licensing server.
    NetScaler ADM only as license server
  4. Click OK.
    This action retains only the pooled licensing feature and disables the following ADM features:
    • ADM backup
    • Event management
    • SSL certificate management
    • Network reporting
    • Network functions
    • Configuration audit
    Note
    By default, the ADM analytics feature is disabled. Make sure to disable this feature if you have enabled it.
    In the confirmation box, click Yes.
    The ADM GUI now displays only the pooled licensing feature. And, the remaining features do not appear.
  5. After you configure ADM only for the licensing feature, add ADC instances in the Infrastructure > Instances page.
Note
  • You can add an ADC instance in one or more ADM servers. When you change the password of such ADC instances, ensure to update the password on all ADM servers where the instance is discovered.
  • A user can still do some operations of the disabled features in the ADM GUI. For example, event polling and ADC backup. As a super administrator, If you want to restrict such operations, disable user accesses for other administrators using an appropriate access policy. For more information, see Configure Access Policies on NetScaler ADM.