Licensing dependencies when upgrading from v18 to v20

[EscondidoAdmin]

We’re running 3CX v18 u9a Ent 128sc on a self-hosted system under ESXi. Looking to upgrade to v20 u2 and want to confirm some things:

1. If we perform a fresh install of v20 and plan on importing the config backed up from the v18 system, will the 3CX license automatically be upgraded to v20? Assuming so, if we have a problem with the upgrade and need to revert to the v18 system, will the license still work for v18? I’ve seen some posts say that once a v18 license has been upgraded to v20, you can’t revert and use with a restored v18 system. Apparently the 3CX license server keeps track of the version a license was used with, which determines the license version.
2. Is a 3CX license tied to a particular hostname, IP, or MAC? We’d like to perform a trial run of the v20 upgrade but we want to keep the current 3CX v18 u9a running so there’s no outage during the trial run(s). This means the hostnames and IP addresses can’t be the same, the MAC shouldn’t be the same between the two 3CX VMs. Wondering if it’s possible to perform a trial v20 upgrade with the current v18 still online.

Thanks,

 

[SteveITS]

> will the 3CX license automatically be upgraded to v20

Yes.

> will the license still work for v18

No, it doesn't go backwards. If the upgrade succeeds then it assumes you're on v20 to stay.

> 3CX license tied to a particular hostname

It gets tied to the hostname of the server. An FQDN can be released but may be lost if released.

Not sure what to suggest about a trial, other than a new small key maybe but presumably your concern is the existing data.

If you installed using the 3CX ISO and haven't modified the server such as installing anything I wouldn't anticipate any problems. It will just take some time to upgrade to Debian 11 then 12 and upgrade the database. 15-20 minutes or so seems to be about a minimum for a small server.