1. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences1 Managing software licences Background Software Licensing LicMon – Licence Monitoring LicMon – Future plans

2. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences2 Background CERN IT-DES supports and distributes more than 100 software packages Most packages are commercial Commercial software requires licences

3. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences3 Software Licensing A software licence deals with issues of copyright law and product liability law Two general licensing schemes: open source or closed source Closed source restrict the user's actions, and require that the user 'signs-up to' the licence

4. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences4 Software Licensing Several closed source licensing schemes Single user Node locked Network/Floating Site wide Home use A licence usually comes as a text file

5. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences5 Software Licensing Tasks Purchase Challenge: How many do we need? Installation Challenge: On which server does a specific licence run? Availability Challenge: Assure accessibility

6. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences6 Software Licensing Tasks Renewal Challenge: How do you remember all the different expiration dates? Retirement Challenge: How can we be sure a licence is unused? Keep track of supported products Inform users about updates and problems

7. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences7 Licence Management Systems Provide licences to end users Monitor the usage of the licences Challenge: Many different systems Macrovision FlexLM, IBM LUM, Wolfram MathLM, Microsoft SMS, Sassafras K2 Challenge: No common interface

8. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences8 LicMon – Licence Monitoring Infrastructure to deal with the challenges of software licensing Developed at CERN by IT-DES Open Source Licence Consists of four parts Licence Servers Log Parser Product Database Web Interface

9. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences9 LicMon Infrastructure Log parser Product Database Web Interface ClientsLicence Servers

10. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences10 LicMon – Licence Servers Availability of Service very important Service must be up at all times Licence manager daemons as well We have redundant servers 2*3 Solaris 3+1+1+1 Windows Not all licence managers allow fallback setup Monitor servers and daemons and start/stop daemons If vendor is not flexible enough: no fallback

11. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences11 LicMon – Log Parser/Product DB Read log files of different licence managers Each with own format… ~ 1k lines of Perl, C or shell script per parser Extract needed information and store in DB Which product, feature, version Used by whom, when, from which host Provides unified interface Long term storage in DB Easy access

12. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences12 LicMon – Web Interface

13. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences13 LicMon – Web Interface

14. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences14 LicMon – Statistics Do we have enough/too many licences? Maximum number of concurrent users Number of denials For the different operating systems For the different versions of the product

15. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences15 LicMon – Statistics Lists of users Current users Ask user X to free a licence for Y Warn them about imminent changes Recent users Inform about planned changes, downtimes With email address

16. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences16 LicMon – Statistics

17. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences17 LicMon – Statistics Version 6.4 of TotalView not used anymore, consider retirement

18. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences18 LicMon – If things go wrong Problems in parsing a log fileProblems in fetching a log file

19. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences19 LicMon Summary Provides us with a common interface Helps us to: Estimate the correct number of licences to buy Keep track of our products and licences Inform the users of updates and problems Find users that are blocking a licence Know when to retire a product Warn the product maintainers when a licence is about to expire

20. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences20 LicMon – Future plans Working on new version to make it more efficient, object oriented and configurable. 3 access levels; public, maintainers, admin. Add monitoring of MAC products with the help of Sassafras KeyServer. Possibility to compare usage of different versions of a product.

21. HEPIX 2005Hege Hansbakk - Managing software licences21 LicMon – Future plans Integrate the product database with the product support web pages of the group. Warnings when usage approaches limits for all products. Timetable of when licences needs to be renewed. Add more reporting options, f.ex which products were used/not used for a given period.