1. July 2017 Engineering Computing
Adding Value to FlexLM
July 2017
Engineering Computing

2. FlexLM The standard in network software licensing
Used by MatLab, AutoCAD, 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

3. FlexLM Shortcomings
Occasionally have reliability issues… rare but devastating
hostname value supplied by client
Logging issues – become more clear through this presentation

4. 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….

5. 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

6. GuardLM 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!

7. GuardLM Enhances FlexLM
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

8. View of User Groups

9. View of Individual Users

10. Usage in Mechanical Eng…

11. Special Instructions
Usage from Nexus is automatic, no changes to the procedures or instructions.
Users on standalones must run licenseenroll,
crossplatform (Windows / OSX / Linux64) app to permanently register the user/workstation with GuardLM 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.

12. GuardLM In Action
GuardLM acts as the FlexLM 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 and an error is returned to the user.
The error cannot be very descriptive.
Since the user had registered with GuardLM using licenseenroll, they will be ed error messages.

13. 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

14. Questions?