Windows 2008 R2 RDS Licensing Issue

Question

I have Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 farm (with all of the application servers running Windows 2003) and I have just migrated from using a Windows 2003 server for the terminal services licensing to a Windows 2008 R2 RDS server for the licensing. We have
a number of thin-clients that connect to the Citrix farm and provide a kiosk for users. We have 85 per device licenses however we are only using 15 of those licenses (plans were made but never implemented to use the rest), so we have 70 available licenses.
The licenses are configured per device and as Windows Server 2003 licenses.
After the migration to 2008 R2, the thin-clients connected to the new licensing server without any trouble at all. As I monitored the licenses on the new server, each thin-client was given a temporary license first and then at the
next connection they got a permanent license. All of this I have been able to confirm through the event logs on the server.
However, what I get in the event logs of the new 2008 R2 licensing server an event with event ID 21 that says:
The Remote Desktop license server "ServerName" does not have any remaining permanent Remote Desktop Services client access licenses (RDS CALs) of the type "Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL". As a result, the Remote Desktop license server cannot issue
RDS CALs of the type "Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL" to the Remote Desktop Session Host server "vvv.xxx.yyy.zzz". To resolve this problem, verify that the Remote Desktop licensing mode configured on the RD Session Host server matches the type of
RDS CALs installed on the Remote Desktop license server. If required, purchase and install additional RDS CALs as needed for this Remote Desktop license server.
(Note I have removed the server name and IP address due to company policy.) I have confirmed that every server in my Citrix farm has its terminal services configuration set for "per device" licensing and I have also specified the name of the 2008
R2 server rather than allow the servers to automatically find the licensing server. I have confirmed that my 2008 R2 server is configured for "per device" licensing.
The IP addresses I have seen in the event log messages are the IP addresses of a Citrix server rather than one of the thin-clients, and so far every Citrix server we have has appeared in one of these event log messages. I have been able
to determine that this event does not occur when a thin-client is connecting up nor does this event occur when I remotely log into the server.
As I noted above we only have 15 thin-clients using the 85 licenses so we have 70 available licenses for the Citrix servers so why are we out of licenses? What is this message trying to tell me?
Thanks
Brent

Answer 1

Hi Bent,
According the Event ID 21, I think you might have the license connection issues with RDS CALs. I suggest you analyze some relative services and
make sure your network without any misconfiguration.
Hopefully, there is an article describes how to troubleshoot this license issue on the terminal server.
Event ID 21 — Terminal Services Client Access License (TS CAL)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/A98D84AC-B824-4F00-BF58-3CFF23493BF9.aspx
By the way, the license of Windows Server 2003 does not support to assign CAL to allow user to access the Windows Server 2008. You should buy a
new Windows Server 2008 license to meet the requirement above if necessary.
Hope this helps.