Applications Systems

Application Monitors Showing "Not Licensed" Due to Timestamp Skew Error

This article explains how to resolve the "Not Licensed" status for Application Monitors caused by the error message indicating that the security timestamp is invalid because it is set in the future.

First published date

10/31/2025 7:37 PM

Last published date

10/31/2025 8:07 PM

Overview

Users may encounter a prompt stating that their Application Monitor status is "Not Licensed." This issue is often accompanied by an error message similar to:

The security timestamp is invalid because its creation time ('2025-X-XTxx:xx:xx.xxxZ') is in the future. Current time is '2025-X-XXTxx:xx:xx.xxxZ' and allowed clock skew is '00:05:00'. 

Product section

Server Application Monitor

Cause

This error occurs when the system clocks on the polling engines or related servers are not synchronized. Specifically, the timestamp on one or more servers is ahead of the others by more than the allowed clock skew of 5 minutes.

Resolution

  1. Confirm that the system time on all polling engines and related servers (including the main polling engine, additional polling engines, and SQL servers) is synchronized and matches within 5 minutes.
  2. If any server’s time differs by more than 5 minutes, adjust the system clock to ensure all servers have the same time and time zone settings.
  3. After correcting the time settings, restart all SolarWinds services on the affected polling engine(s) where the time was adjusted.
    1. It is recommended to restart services on the primary polling engine first, then on additional polling engines.
  4. Wait for several polling cycles to finish. The Application Monitor license status should automatically synchronize and update to licensed.