BarTender Starter, Professional and Automation licences can be managed through an on-premise licence server. This gives your business control over its local BarTender environment, but it also means that a server failure can affect access to licensing across connected computers.
So, what happens if the server hosting your BarTender licence goes down?
Printing Can Continue for Up to 72 Hours
BarTender includes a built-in 72-hour grace period that allows connected client computers to temporarily continue printing if they lose contact with the licence server.
This grace period helps minimise disruption while the original server is recovered or the licence is moved to a replacement system.
The 72-hour period should be treated as an emergency recovery window. It is important to begin the recovery process as soon as the server failure is identified.
Contact Technical Support Immediately
As soon as you become aware that the licence server has failed, contact Seagull Scientific Technical Support immediately:
Contact BarTender Technical Support
Starting the recovery process promptly gives the support team the best opportunity to deactivate the licence from the failed server and reactivate it on a replacement system before the 72-hour grace period expires.
Moving the Licence to a Replacement Server
If the original server has crashed and cannot be restored, the BarTender licence can be deactivated from the unavailable server and reactivated on a new setup.
Technical support can assist with:
- deactivating the licence from the failed server
- preparing the replacement server
- reactivating the BarTender licence
- confirming that connected computers can communicate with the new licence server
Completing this process within the grace period allows normal licensed operation to resume before temporary printing access ends.
Is Automatic Failover Available?
BarTender Starter, Professional and Automation licences do not include redundant licensing or automatic licence-server failover.
These high-availability features are available with BarTender Enterprise. Businesses that cannot tolerate a licence-server outage may wish to consider whether Enterprise is better suited to their operational requirements.
For Starter, Professional and Automation users, maintaining current backups and having a documented server recovery plan can help reduce downtime.
Optional Premium Support
Premium Support is available as an optional upgrade for businesses that require faster assistance with critical issues.
Premium Support includes a one-calendar-hour response time for critical incidents, along with full weekend coverage.
This can provide additional reassurance for organisations that rely heavily on BarTender for essential production and printing operations.
The Key Takeaway
If an on-premise BarTender licence server running Starter, Professional or Automation goes down, printing does not stop immediately. Connected computers can continue printing for up to 72 hours while the licence is recovered and activated on a replacement server.
Because these editions do not include automatic licence-server failover, contact technical support immediately and begin the recovery process as soon as the outage is detected.