Emergency Activation
What is Emergency Activation
After activating your License Key in Ignition, you may see a banner that says Ignition is in Emergency Activation Mode.
What Does This Mean?
This means the License Key that you used has already been activated. Either it was used previously on another computer, or something went wrong during activation and it registered twice. Fortunately, you have plenty of time to fix this problem. Emergency Activation Mode means you are fully licensed for 7 days, so even at night or over the weekend, you can still run without interruption until it is fixed.
How Do I Fix It?
In order to fix your License Key, you must contact Inductive Automation. You can reach us by email or by phone and we will walk you through fixing your license. It is usually a very quick procedure that involves you re-activating after we have fixed your License Key from our end.
Why Does This Exist?
In short, computers sometimes fail and you need to get running again, fast.
When you initially activate your copy of Ignition, it will run as long as your computer does. As we all know, sometimes there are hardware failures or your computer just stops working. There are many things you can do to minimize this, but once it happens you need to be able to get Ignition up and running again quickly. This Emergency Activation Mode allows you to do this without having to involve Inductive Automation until after your facility is back on track.
Quick Disaster Recovery Plan
What You Need Before an Emergency Happens
For full steps to get Ignition running for the first time, see our Quick Start Guide. If you already have Ignition installed and running in your facility, it's easy to get back to running quickly. Just make sure you have the following stored on a computer or shared drive that is not your Ignition Gateway:
- A Gateway Backup. If you haven't already, you should set up Automatic Backups.
- Your Ignition License Key. Make sure you store the 6 digit code somewhere that you can easily retrieve it if your computer fails.
- The Ignition software Installer. In an emergency, it's best to have the installer for the version you are currently using. You can always download an archived version from our website, but having one on hand is preferred. Pro tip: Edit the installer filename to include your License Key so it's easily available.
Emergency Restore Steps
Find another computer or create a new Virtual Machine. You need to get something up and running to put Ignition on first. We recommend having something on standby that is the same as the original computer. Further considerations:
- Set your new computer to the same IP Address of the original Ignition Gateway. This way your clients won't need to do anything special to start running again.
- Make sure your firewall is set correctly. At minimum, you must have the Ignition port open (8088 by default). In an emergency situation, you may want to just disable the firewall temporarily.
Install Ignition on the new computer. If you don't have Java installed already, Ignition will install it for you.
Load a Gateway Backup. Everything in Ignition is in the Gateway Backup, once it's loaded, you are running again!
Activate your License. Your existing License Key will only work normally the first time it is used. After that, if you try to use it again, it will instead go into an Emergency 7-Day Trial. This gives you plenty of time to get back up and running before you have to deal with the License Key, even if your failure is on the weekend or outside Inductive Automation's business hours.
Contact Inductive Automation. You can reach us by email or by phone (1-800-266-7798) and we will walk you through fixing your license.