No, you don't need a license key, although you can if the packaged Stingray configurations don't meet your requirements, or if you don't want to use the subscription pricing we offer on Amazon.
There are a number of pre-configured AMIs to chose from, published on Amazon's AWS Marketplace. Other than the developer edition, each Stingray AMI contains a built-in license key, so it works 'out of the box'. You do not have to provide your own license key.
New in the 9.2 release, you can also BYOL (bring your own license). To use your own license key, select the Stingray Development Edition (this AMI has no license key, and there are no vendor charges associated with it). You can then upload your own license key (check with the support portal if you need to modify the IP address your license key is associated with).
How does licensing work on EC2?
When you launch an instance of a Stingray AMI, Amazon checks that you have signed up to use the AMI. If you have, EC2 launches the instance; if you have not, EC2 refuses to launch the instance. Once the instance is running, it contacts EC2 periodically to check that it is still authorized to run.
If the authorization check fails, the traffic manager will log a warning message but will continue to run normally for a grace period, the length of which is given in the log message. This prevents transient faults in EC2 from disrupting your services. If the authorization check continues to fail, the traffic manager will stop handling traffic when the grace period expires.
