MSC Licensing

Introduction

MSC uses the FLEXlm license management system from Macrovision as the primary method for licensing MSC products. This document is a summary of how MSC applications use FLEXlm, including:

• The various license types available.
• Installing the license system and related license files.
• Administering the license system.

License Types

A variety of license types can be used with MSC applications:

FLEXlm Licensing

MSC uses FLEXlm as the primary method for licensing MSC products. FLEXlm supports many different license types.

Uncounted Nodelock

Uncounted nodelock licenses allow unlimited use of licensed products on one or more specific computers. No license server is used with uncounted nodelock licenses; only a license file is needed.

Counted Nodelock

Counted nodelock licenses allow limited use of licensed products on one or more specific computers. A license server is used to manage the number of licensed users.

Concurrent

Concurrent licensing allows limited use of licensed products by any system on the user's network. Concurrent use of each licensed product is limited only by the number of licenses available for the product. A license server is used to manage the number of licensed users.

With standard concurrent licensing, each product has a separate pool of licenses specific to the product or product option.

VPD Campus

MSC's VPD Campus license system is similar to concurrent licensing, with one notable exception: instead of each product and product option having separate pools of licenses, all MSC products share a single, common pool of licenses. Each product checks out licenses from the pool based on the product's value.

VPD Campus licenses provide exceptional flexibility for managing the licensed use of MSC products.

As with concurrent licensing, a license server is used to manage the number of licensed users.

Redundant

Normally, a single license server provides a high degree of availability with a small amount of administrative overhead. In environments that require the highest levels of availability, FLEXlm includes a redundant server option.

Instead of using a single license server to manage the licenses, three separate servers work cooperatively to manage the same set of licenses. One of the three servers is automatically elected to act as the master. As licenses are checked out and back in, each of the three servers keeps track of the state of the license pool. If the master server crashes (due to a network problem, a power outage, etc.), the other two servers automatically take over, and license activity continues without interruption.

Quorums

A redundant servers setup will only work if at least two of the three servers are up and running.

Important Considerations

Redundant servers add complexity to the license environment, and require extra system administration support. Redundant servers are not recommended at sites without a full-time system administrator.

System administrators should monitor the health of each license server on a continuing basis, and make every attempt to keep all three servers running at all times. If only two servers are running, a failure of either server will disable the redundant license system completely.

Multiple Servers

When maximum availability is important, an alternative to redundant servers is to use multiple servers. With multiple servers, the pool of licenses is split between two or more license servers, which each act independently of the others. Users set their licensing specification to a list of the available servers; MSC products will scan through the list of until a server is found that has sufficient licenses available.

SBCM Licensing

MSC.Nastran runs on some platforms which do not support FLEXlm licensing. On these platforms, a special nodelock licensing system known as SBCM is provided.

License Installation

Installing a FLEXlm License Server

For all types of counted licensing (counted nodelock, concurrent, VPD Campus), you must install the FLEXlm license server on the machine designated as the server. The MSC installer treats the FLEXlm license server as just another MSC product set. The FLEXlm license server includes the executables for lmgrd and lmutil, and on Unix systems the flexlm invocation script.

The FLEXlm executables and license files are installed in sub-directories of the flexlm direcotry. By default, this directory is created under the MSC installation base directory.

Installing the License File

During the installation of each product, you will be prompted to enter licensing information. If a license is already installed, you may point to the installed license file or license server. To update licenses, select the new license file that you received via e-mail. The installation will process the e-mail file and create a properly formatted license.dat file in the licenses subdirectory of the flexlm directory.

Updating the License File

Before your licenses expire, you should upgrade to a new license file.

To upgrade a license.dat file on a Unix system, you may either edit the current file and replace the contents, or you may use the MSC installation tool to upgrade it for you. The command:

will install a new license.dat file in where install-dir is:

1. specified with the -b option, as in
   mscsetup -b install-dir flexlm new-license.dat-file
2. determined by the environment variable MSC_BASE;
3. the MSC_BASE output from the flexlm command, if it resides in the PATH;
4. the default installatin base directory /msc. If an existing license.dat file is alread present, the old file sill be versioned, and the SERVER port number and any DAEMON from the file will be placed into the new file.

Starting the License Server

lmgrd is the main program for the FLEXlm license server. lmgrd looks for the license file, which contains details about the license features that are supported.

On Unix systems, MSC strongly recommends that lmgrd be run as a non-privileged user (i.e., not as root), since any process run as root poses a potential security risk.

If you are not root, you may start lmgrd from the command line:

and will write the license manager log file to

It's usually best to start lmgrd during the start-up process on the server. You can let the MSC installation program modify /etc/inittab for you. The installation script will aks you before including the following entry in /etc/inittab, which starts lmgrd as a regular user:

On Windows systems, the installation process sets up lmgrd to start up automatically as a service. MSC strongly recommends that lmgrd be run automatically at system start up.

Administration

License Utilities

FLEXlm provides utilities to help manage licensing activities on the network. These utilities are described below:

Utility	Description
lmcksum	Prints a checksum of each FEATURE line
lmdiag	Diagnoses license checkout problems
lmdown	Gracefully shuts down all license daemons (both lmgrd and all vendor daemons) on the the license server system (or on all three systems when redundant servers are in use).
lmhostid	Prints the hostid of a system.
lmremove	Removes a single user's license for the specified feature.
lmreread	Causes the license damon to reread the license file and start any new vendor daemons.
lmstat	Displays the status of the license daemons.
lmswitchr	Switches the report writer log file.
lmver	Reports the FLEXlm version of a library or binary file.

FLEXlm Options File

You may choose to specify an options file on the DAEMON line of the license file. The options file allows you to control various operating parameters of FLEXlm. Specifically, the options file allows the license administrator to:

• Deny or allow the use of one or more features based on username, hostname, or display name;
• Reserve licenses for specific users or hosts;
• Control the amount of diagnostic information written to the log file about license usage.

FLEXlm Documentation

The following documentation is provided by Macrovision:

• FLEXlm End User Manual: html, PDF