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What is Floating Licensing?
FL (Floating License) allows you to install and use the same license (i.e. MagicDraw Standard, Professional, Enterprise Edition or Plugins) on multiple machines. Suppose you have 10 workstations where MagicDraw is used. In most cases there are less than 10 users concurrently using MagicDraw. Instead of purchasing 10 Professional (or Standard) seat licenses, only purchase the number of Floating Licenses to support the number of concurrent users. Floating License(s) are usually more economical in development centers than purchasing individual seat licenses.
How does license server works?
Whenever you obtain Floating License you may install MagicDraw client application (Standard - Enterprise) on as many workstations as you need. The license server software (which is free and is provided together with FL clients) needs to be installed on some computer (which is referred to as a license server). Normally, only one license server is required in your network.
The license server is provided with the key, which specifies how many and what types of Floating Licenses this server may serve. The same server may serve different numbers of different Editions and plugins licenses, e.g. 2 Standard and 3 Professional FL licenses. In this case, during the connection, you will be asked to select the edition you want to run - Standard, Enterprise, or Professional.
How does a client application obtain the floating license?
In order to work with the FL client, you will need to specify the address of the license server and port (by default, FlexNet - 1101, DSLS - 4085) and connect to it. Every time FL client connects to the license server it checked out a license from that server and the number of available licenses on this server is decreased. If all available licenses from the server are leased, the next client who wants to obtain a license must wait until one of the other client's finishes its work and the license is returned back to the license server.
What if the connection with the license server is lost?
Whenever FL client leases the license from the license server, it constantly updates the server with the message that it is still alive. The license server in turn acknowledges that the license is still valid. If the connection with the server is lost, the client application will not receive acknowledgements from the server and the client application will be gracefully terminated (MagicDraw forces you to save your work and close the application or try to reconnect again). In the case of no update from the client, the license server considers the license to be returned and it is available to other clients.
Floating licenses on a Laptop
Floating Licenses are primarily intended for workstations directly connected to a network. However, a portable computer that is connected to the Internet and can contact the license server, may use a Floating License as well.
Borrowing - offline license mode
If a license will to be used on a computer that is intermittently connected to the license server, that license can be borrowed from server and used as an offline floating license. A license can be borrowed from a license server for the selected period of time (default 24 hours) via Select Edition/Plugin in application. The borrowed license is used as an application on a computer that is no longer connected to the license server.
Node locking
Floating licenses are locked to a particular machine, on which the FLEXnet/DSLS server is running. The Ethernet address (also referred to as a MAC address) of Ethernet devices or NICs (network interface cards) is used as the Target ID for server license locking to particular hardware.
DSLS license server
For detailed information regarding DSLS, see the DSLS Installation and Configuration Guide.
FLEXnet license server
License Server Manager
FLEXnet license server is used to manage floating licenses. The license server manager is one of the components that makes up a license server (the other being the vendor daemon). There is available a Web-based license server manager with the graphical user interface (GUI) - lmadmin.
A brief FLEXnet license server advantages and capabilities:
- Intuitive license management with rich graphical user interface provided by lmadmin.
- Easy to perform general license management tasks, such as configuring license and stopping servers.
- Easy accessible picture of license status - how many licenses are available and who is using them.
- Ability to report on the duration a product is in use.
- Alerts if licenses are running low, unavailable, etc.
- Allow/deny/reserve products to be used by specific users, hosts, and groups.
- Log file is generated, containing products usage information.
Structure of FLEXnet license server
Vendor daemon - one of the files that is a part of the license server. This executable is customized and built by us. To serve our products licenses, license server requires cameo vendor daemon.
License file - a text file, usually with the .lic or .txt extension, which contains license certificates.
Options file - a configuration file available on the license server, which license administrators can use to allow / deny / reserve products to be used by specific users, hosts, and groups.
Report log file - a file that runs on a license server, which contains data about the features used by a single vendor daemon. Report logs are encrypted and cannot be read by a person, but are used by FLEXnet Manager to produce reports.
Debug log file - a file used by the license server to record status and error messages that are useful for debugging the license server. Each license server can have one or more of these files.
lmadmin - the new license server manager, which includes a Web-based GUI.
lmgrd - a command-line-based license server manager.
License usage analysis
FLEXnet Manager is the only official solution with the direct access to the FLEX license usage information – enabling enterprises to track and manage their FLEXenabled software with the most comprehensive and accurate usage reports.
Use Flexera Software license administration solution, FLEXnet Manager, to gain exceptional visibility into license usage data and to create insightful reports on critical information like license availability and usage. FLEXnet Manager can be fully automated to run these reports on schedule and can be used to track license servers and usage across a heterogeneous network of server including Windows NT, Linux and UNIX. Contact Flexera Software at www.flexerasoftware.com for more details on how to obtain an evaluation copy of FLEXnet Manager for your enterprise.
In order to track license usage and gather license related statistics you might consider third party software also:
http://www.openlm.com
http://www.jtbworld.com/jtbflexreport/index.htm
https://www.x-formation.com/license-statistics
Server configuration capabilities
The License Server options file allows the license administrator to control various operating parameters within the constraints of the license model. The user is identified by his/her user name, host name, display, IP address, and other. For the concurrent (floating) licenses, the license administrator can perform the following actions:
- Allow / deny / reserve products to be used by specific users, hosts, and groups.
- Restrict the number of licenses available.
For more information, see "Managing the Options File" section in the License Administration Guide.
Server alerts
The license server alerts when there are no available licenses or the server is down.
Alerts are configurable. You may set up lmadmin to issue alerts and warn you of potential problems. For example, you may set up to get alerts on license expiry or vendor daemon status.
Optionally you may use an lmadmin email alerter service. This service will poll for alerts and then send a user an email when an alert has been triggered.
For more information, see "Creating an lmadmin Alerter Service section" in the License Administration Guide.
References
License Administration Guide (comprehensive server setup and management instructions)