Using Epicor Pilot DB as a second Live environment

Does anyone see any reason why we could not set up a second Live instance using the Pilot DB slot for E10? We have a group that is currently set up as a Plant, that wants to break out of the Live Epicor instance and run their own instance in Pilot for a short time separate

Licensing considerations would be my first area of concern

Totally. Legally, you can’t run 2 production instances with one set of licenses.

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Why would that be? Why would Epicor care if I am using my Pilot environment to run one company by themselves?

The user count is done by license. If a company had a license for 24 users and then created a new databased with the same license then they would reuse those 24 licenses. It would be like if you wrote a solution for one company and they gave it to another company. You would experience loss revenue.

Totally agree with not doing this.

But the licenses, if I am using 2 in test (me + me doing DMT) and 18 in production, am I not using 20 licenses? Because I feel like I have hit the license limit before when doing that.

I took @Aaron_Moreng’s “licensing” comment to mean the agreement with Epicor.

Yes that’s what I am referring to. It is a breech of contract with Epicor to use the same license for 2 production instances. You can have as many non-production instances with the same license as needed, but it’s a non-starter to use the same one for two production instances.

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I reviewed the contract and did not see anywhere that is specified that a company cannot run two production instances off the same license. That is how Pilot and Test works. Would this be listed in some other document?
What I want to find out : Is this REALLY a legal issue in a contract somewhere? Or is this an instance where everybody thinks its a breach because they don’t like it… but technically it is perfectly legal.

That would happen only if the instances are on the same app server. Our dev environment where Pilot is installed is a completely separate server, with a different App server, and a different DB server.

True… but this is the way Pilot and Test DB’s work and Epicor allows for this. So why would Epicor care if I decide tyo use PIlot the same way, but have a group using it as their live environment.

What’s special about the Pilot spot? For cloud users, that’s where testing happens and Epicor is fine with reusing the licenses there. If you have a dev instance, or 20, you can use that license on those two.

The line is production use. This could lead to different versions which would add to support load and if we’ve not paying for the license or support then… :man_shrugging:

Just create a new instance for the second company, buy the licenses and go.

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I don’t know what your contract states, but the license is provisioned for the use defined in the contract. It’s like if you gave out your license to this forum for anyone to use. That is basically the same thing. You’re the one assessing if the risk is worth the reward here, so I won’t comment on that. But I’m very sure that two production instances with the same license is an no-go. It’s like SQL licensing. Can you do it? Maybe. Is it worth it? Probably not.
You mentioned that’s how Pilot and Test works. Yes, you’re right, you can use the license for multiple instances. But functionally, those are not production environments, regardless of the name and thus are allowed. Whether they (Epicor) like it or not is irrelevant and it’s purely based on your contract, which again I don’t have but I do know it’s not allowed.

Real life answer is this: are your lawyers better than Epicor’s and/or, is the litigation cost cheaper than what you would gain by fighting the man?

Up to you.

P.S., I believe you are allowed to add companies to Epicor in production without the multi-site license. They just are not linkable. Our CAM told me that. And I found it to be true.

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None of us are lawyers, and none of us have spent any more than cursory time (if even that) looking at the contract. If you want the actual true answer, you’d need to speak to Epicor’s legal staff.

Or follow @JasonMcD’s advice.

Asking Epicor’s legal staff for their interpretation of the contract is like asking your spouse’s divorce attorney for their opinion. If you ever need a lawyer, always, always, always hire your own.

Having said that, I seriously doubt such a huge and obvious loophole has been left open. Customers running more licenses than authorized is basically the first thing a legal team will secure against.

What is the use case for having separate production environments, because you can have more than one independent company in one production database.

Vinay Kamboj

HA!! You are right on. I also personally know Ireland and his staff, so I know what that would look like.