Adding Value to Flex LM July 2017 Engineering

Adding Value to Flex. LM July 2017 Engineering Computing

Flex. LM • The standard in network software licensing • Used by Mat. Lab, Auto. CAD, many others • Supports floating licenses which are more economical than fixed licenses • Can have multiple license servers, failover • Can have separate license servers for research vs. education, different costs

FLEXLM SHORTCOMINGS • Occasionally have reliability issues… rare but devastating • hostname value supplied by client • Logging issues – become more clear through this presentation

One Week Of Monitoring Matlab Educational License • Track by userid, application, toolboxes, machine name, • Tracked on 15 minute intervals • Didn’t know what we’d find….

One Week Of Monitoring Matlab Educational License • Results: • 110 Faculty and grads accounted for the a lot of usage > 4, 000 hours • Some ran on three workstations simultaneously, possibly three people, or one • Is that all teaching related, or maybe some research • 588 Engineering undergrads accounted for > 4, 000 hours (appropriate use) • Alumni accounted for > 1, 000 hours • The honour system may not be working as well as we hoped

Guard. LM Features • Accurately logs… • Logs hostname/netbios name, IP, user, nexususerid • for later review or real-time decisions • Can allow or prevent users from using the service • Based on abuse criteria we set by thresholds • • Excessive concurrent usage Over ‘Quota’ usage Workstation/Userid known to be a problem Allowing exceptions we may chose to make, eg. Installer account • Goal: to have thresholds so that rules can be largely automated!

Guard. LM Enhances Flex. LM • improve our compliance with licensing • remove licensing capabilities from users who are not compliant (eg. Should be on Research licensing) • remove alumni or others who are not reasonably eligible for access • track usage • • • by department, year/term find those who routinely forget to close the software and thus hog licenses to track which departments should help pay by network location (labs, offices, vpn, wifi) answer questions of profs who hear from students that software is fully subscribed • improve availability • by weening off those who should not be on this license server, • or who forget to close software

View of User Groups

View of Individual Users

Usage in Mechanical Eng…

Special Instructions • Usage from Nexus is automatic, no changes to the procedures or instructions. • Users on standalones must run licenseenroll, • crossplatform (Windows / OSX / Linux 64) app to permanently register the user/workstation with Guard. LM server • If we run the scientific software in a VM, must run licenseenroll from same VM • A single user can register any number of workstations/vms • Even if the same computer is used on a different IP address (eg. For VPN or Wifi usage), the name stays with the workstation.

Guard. LM In Action • Guard. LM acts as the Flex. LM server for the users, adds userid and pc rules. • When users’ requests are permitted (from database), everything functions as normal and the request is mapped to the nexus userid. • If the user or workstation are forbidden in the database, the license request is discarded an error is returned to the user. • • The error cannot be very descriptive. • Since the user had registered with Guard. LM using licenseenroll, they will be Emailed error messages.

Next Steps • Early June we started monitoring • Notified heaviest users we could identify • Had them contact Will Lewis or Steve Carr to resolve usage • Mostly positive – many people had no idea there was an issue before • Effective July 10 will start pruning non-stop users of Educational licenses • Will and Steve will have power to re-enable them upon request • Until standalone people register, we will not know exactly who they are

Questions?