Automating VLM Licences

[skeatz]

I have purchased 600 NI Circuit Design Suite Educational licences for 1200 users. I need to split the licences amongst multiple VLM servers, just in case a server fails. I have to maintain sufficient licences for scheduled classes, as well as disconnected licences for off-campus & project use. Disconnected licences will not exceed 14 days. I also need to provide for home licences if required.

Because of the large number of users, I want to fully automate the process of granting licences to my users. I have a trial VLM server set up to test the system and I have the following issues:
- I need to manually accept all initial requests by each user for permission to join the server
- To grant disconnected licences:
    - users have to make a request via email/sms/call
    - I need to manually generate the disconnected licence for that user
    - either email the licence to the user or inform the user to pick it up from a shared folder
    - user has to import the disconnected licence into his local licence manager

The above procedure is very labour intensive and is totally unacceptable, given the large number of users that I need to support.

Nestor/Tien or anyone, is there a way for me to fully automate the process, so that the system will automatically accept the initial request for permission to join the VLM server, then allow users to obtain a temp licence for off-campus use (best if I can specify loan period, but not exceeding 14 days)?

You advice/help will be most appreciated.

Thanks,
steven

[nestor-sg]

Steven, these answers should be available in the User Guide of the VLM... go to Help > Contents, then in the Contents tab browse under "What do you want to do?", then under "Prepare Software for Network Installation" and you'll see a document called "Automatically Handle Permission Requests". This will help with the problem of manually accepting each request... please note that the user must haved used a Network Installer for this to work.

Now with the disconnected licenses... you cannot automate the process of a user creating a disconnected license, this has to be done by the person managing the server, you can make it more efficient with the Import Utility (search the Help for this), but somebody will ultimately right-click and generate the disconnected license manually...  what you can automate though, is the process to reconnect disconnected computers...  there is a document in the Help file called "Automatically Reconnecting Disconnected Computers". It explains how you can automate with a Windows Task or a simple command line the process to reconnect those disconnected licenses with the understanding that the disconnected license has expired.

If you find trouble going through this process, there is a special team of engineers dedicated to help with NI VLM and licensing issues in our Corporate office... you can generate a service request at www.ni.com/ask and when you ask to be routed to a licensing AE. You will definitely find more professional help from that team.

[skeatz]

Nestor, thanks for your reply. I'm concurrently working with NI's distributor here in SG & MY, trying to resolve the issues. They are also in contact with NI staff in SG and EWB staff in CA. We have been trying to sort this out for the past week or so, but have not been successful so far.

For example, there is a checkbox in the VLM /Option/Preferences dialog box where the administrator can set VLM to automatically handle permission requests. Also, according to VLM's documentation, if the VLM server cannot be contacted, the users can still run Multisim/Ultiboard for a period of 14 days (which is more than enough for my users). It's just that it is not happening on my test VLM server & both distributor and NI engineer in SG have been unable to resolve it so far.

I'm asking in the forum as a back up, in the hope that others might have encountered the same problems or have a solution.

thanks again,
Steven

[skeatz]

Just an update (for other NI Circuit Design Suite Administrators)
- Options/Preferences/Automatically handle permission requests check box must be ticked. To enable the automatic handling of permission requests, the VLM gui interface has to be closed. Somehow, the feature does not work if the VLM gui is open
- The 14-day backup licence feature is only available for 'Managed Computer-based Non-Concurrent' licencing option.
- For 'Managed Concurrent' licencing option, disconnected licences must be handled manually
- NI says that the Flexlm 'borrow' feature, which would allow scripting for the automatic issue of disconnected licences is not implemented in NI Circuit Design Suite

Network installer allows automatic setting of VLM server for client. If you have more than 1 VLM server (for redundancy?), you will need to manually add in the name/address(es) of the other VLM servers, unless you create a script to do that.

Hope some of you may find this information useful.

NI staff: perhaps you could add some of this info into the knowledge base?

rgds

[nestor-sg]

rgds,

Have you checked KnowledgeBase 3LGEJE6E: Can I use BORROW in my Volume License Agreement?, it basically explains how to use the BORROW command with NI software.

NI Circuit Design Suite uses the standard NI licensing, it does not have anything special. And as far as I am concerned (look at the KB) it was released after NILM 3.0 since we do not have anything special in our licensing if other NI software supports it, Circuit Design should support it. You need though, a special license file that you request from agreements@ni.com that supports the BORROW functionality, and you need to use FLEXlm, not VLM.  I'm not a NILM expert, we do have a team that handles those things if you contact support.

[skeatz]

We came across the knowledge base article that you mentioned; we have also been discussing the issue with the local NI VLM support engineer. I think the key point is that in order to use the BORROW feature, I need to unsuite my product; unfortunately, that is not possible, as I bought the software as a complete package (i.e. NI Circuit Design Suite, rather than Multisim + Ultiboard). The pricing is different, apparently.

There is another solution to the problem - use a Managed Non-concurrent licence instead of the Managed Concurrent licence. Once you have created the user accounts on the VLM Server, these same users can now access Multisim and/or Ultiboard using a temporary backup-licence (14-day duration), when the VLM Server is not available.

Hope this info helps other Multisim/Ultiboard administrators out there.