The license is controlled by a License key file that you import into the Controller, it's assigned by MAC address, and controls how many agent licenses and which types can report into it. I think the problem you would run into, if you spin up multiple VMs is that when you're configuring an agent to report into your controller, you hard-code into the Controller.xml the controller's customer name and the controller's lincense key information. If you try to mirror the key, your agents would get confused because the customer name and license key name would all be the same across your mirrored controllers.
