The blog..

So.. Citrix has in many ways done a lot to better accomodate how customers would like the licenses to be, for the licenses to better support how businesses work, how other vendors license their products and so on.

However it has given a few hiccups in the systems that lies behind. One of these problems is the “invalid host” error when allocating new licenses.

The cause of this problem is that the licenses we are receiving are now bound to different products, so not all licenses can be allocated to the normal Citrix license-server and therefor when we try to allocate our licenses we get the “invalid host” error.. not very descriptive, but there there is a workaround available.

The issue typically looks like this:

Resolution (as pr. http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx120645)

1. Log on to My Citrix.
2. Highlight Choose a toolbox and select Activation System/Manage Licenses from the list.
3. From the current tool dropdown list, select View Licenses.
4. Next to the unallocated license you wish to allocate, click on the link Click to allocate.
5. Follow the prompts to allocate the license.
6. When prompted to Select Licenses to Allocate, highlight one product, such as "XenApp Platinum" and click on Filter products. Only XenApp Platinum should be appearing now. <<—very important to filter
7. Enter the quantity to allocate, enter the Hostname of the license server and, at the bottom of the page, select Allocate.
8. Download the license file.
9. Repeat steps 1 through 8 for the remaining products.
Note: In case you own WANScaler hardware appliances, you must allocate the WANScaler Client licenses to the Host ID of your hardware appliance (you can find the Host ID on your WANScaler under system tools). In case, you do not own WANScaler hardware appliances yet, there is no need to allocate the WANScaler Client licenses.

This product is known and mentioned for XenApp in the above mentioned support article, however i have now heard about the same issue with quite a lot of the customers who upgraded to XenDesktop Platinum from their XenApp. So the issue also exists with XenDesktop licenses.

/Rene Vester