No. Every Zeus AMI contains a built-in license key, so it works 'out of the box'. You do not have to provide your own license key, or contact Zeus for a key. In fact, it is impossible to upload a new license key to an EC2 instance, or to remove or override the built-in key.

How does licensing work on EC2?

When you launch an instance of a Zeus 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 succeeds, the traffic manager will continue to run normally.
• 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.

Euan Harris [Zeus Dev Team] 29 October 2009