Tag Archives: Flexnet publisher

Application Note 2011: Quick Installation guide for the OpenLM license management system v1.8

Posted on by

The OpenLM Floating license monitoring and Usage optimization tool interfaces an ever growing variety of license managers, such as Flexera FlexLM (Flexnet publisher), Beta LM, IBM LUM, DSLS, Sentinel HASP, Sentinel RMS, Reprise RLM, MathLM, LM-X and Easycopy.

Step 1: Installation

The OpenLM System components are available for download on the OpenLM site. After filling in your name and email, you would be directed to the download section. Select the OpenLM Version 1.8 section:


And start by downloading the server:

When downloading is complete, double click the downloaded *.msi file and follow the standard installation instructions.

Step 2: Configuring License Servers

When the installation is complete, click:

Windows’ Start → All Programs → OpenLM → Server → OpenLM Server Configuration

The OpenLM Server configuration window opens.

1. Add in your license servers:

  • Click the ‘Add’ button,

  • Type in the License server’s host name or IP (e.g. lm10) and Port number (e.g. 27000)

  • Select the new License server’s type (e.g. FlexLM)

  • Type in an informative name (e.g. “lm10 – ArcGis server”)

  • Select the license server’s time zone (e.g. UTC+1)

The image below demonstrates this configuration:

 

2. Select a license server and click the check button in order to ensure that OpenLM can retrieve information from that license server. This information is the input received from the License manager.

3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 for all license servers.

4. Click ‘Apply’, and “Restart now”.

Step 3: The OpenLM EasyAdmin Interface

The EasyAdmin web application is the main OpenLM Administrative and user interface.

You can find it on:

Windows’ Start → All Programs → OpenLM → OpenLM EasyAdmin2.

The OpenLM EasyAdmin opens. Click the EasyAdmin start button to explore this application’s features.

The image above is an example of an EasyAdmin workspace. It features Administrative tools, License data, License usage data, Graphic usage representation, Roles and permissions’ assignment, and Active Agent capabilities.

For more information on the OpenLM EasyAdmin web interface, please refer to this document.

Congratulations!

You now have an up and running OpenLM system.

For further information regarding the installation and preliminary configuration of the OpenLM system components, please refer to the “Application Note 2010: OpenLM license management system Complete Installation guide v1.8” document.

Revision table

Revision

Author

Date

Remarks

0.1

Orik

Apr 23,  2013

Preliminary

Siemens PLM license analysis and license monitoring

Posted on by

OpenLM supports license monitoring of a wide, and ever growing variety of license managers. Among those are Flexera FlexLM (Flexnet publisher), IBM LUM, DSLS, Sentinel HASP, Sentinel RMS, Reprise RLM, and LM-X.

This group of license management utilities encompass a great variety of licensed products. One group of such licensed products is the Siemens PLM (formerly UGS) 3D & 2D Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) group.

The OpenLM tool provides high level of application usage management and optimization for PLM licenses, providing clear and valuable usage information for Managers, License Administrators and End Users.

Siemens PLM Common Licensing

Siemens PLM employs the “Siemens PLM Software Common Licensing” tool in order to deliver a consistent licensing implementation to all PLM products. It is based on the Flexera FlexNet license management tool, and has incorporated some unique characteristics:

  • The PLM Common Licensing toolkit has adopted the Siemens PLM Software-wide licensing vendor daemon ugslmd. Consequently, all Siemens PLM products gain access to common licenses utilize this same daemon.
  • The PLM Common Licensing toolkit employs a unified license file for all PLM products.
  • The default port for the PLM ugslmd vendor daemon is 28000. That was decided in order to avoid conflicts with other applications, using the default FlexLM port 27000.
  • Composite ID (CID): This is a 12 digit hexadecimal unique machine identifier that is used as part of Siemens PLM Software licensing to lock a license file to a machine. The CID is distinguished from a FLEXnet hostid by the keyword “COMPOSITE=”.
  • NX bundles and Suite Packages: These are packages that Siemens PLM Software has predefined to meet the general needs of customers at a lower cost than purchasing individual floating licenses.

For more information on Siemens PLM Software Common Licensing, please refer to this PDF.

The OpenLM advantage

The OpenLM license monitoring tool incorporates many advantages in PLM software maintenance for members of all positions in an organization. In a nutshell:

  • Managers get a clear picture of their Software assets.
  • System Administrators are freed from managing licenses.
  • End users enjoy improved PLM license availability.

Additionally, OpenLM v 1.8 Automatically sorts NX suites, to clearly display Siemens PLM application usage measuring in its true context.

Why don’t I see license denial reports in the Flexnet ( FlexLM ) debug log file ?

Posted on by

OpenLM provides a mean to monitor Flexnet publisher license denials. Please see this document for clarification. It does so by extracting information from  the FlexLM debug log file.

Denial reports may not appear in the FlexLM debug log if the application’s option file contains a NOLOG line, with a DENIED flag. If this is the case, edit the option file to exclude this flag, and restart the license server. See this document for more information.

Trouble Shoot Form: Database Item 001 (Connection to SQL Server Database failed)

Posted on by

Trouble Shoot Form: Item 02.001

Title Connection to SQL Server DB failed.
Category Data Base
Date Sep 26, 2011
Handled by Rachel.
Relevant Links (link to mantis item, docs, customer correspondence etc.)
Applies to license managers FLEXlm, FLEXnet Publisher, IBM LUM, HASP, RLM, Sentinel RMS, DSLS, LM-X
Applies to license model Floating licenses, Network licenses, Concurrent licenses
Symptoms Customer reported failure to connect to a new SQL Server through EasyAdmin. Succeeded in connecting it via the Configuration form “Check” button. Customer succeeded in connecting to old FB Server through EasyAdmin.
Observed during investigation Log contained fatal error:
Login failed for user ‘DPI\ORANTESTSPATIAL$’
Trouble shoot process Credentials issue
Solution Found (Options: Found/Pending/Known Issue)

Symptoms

Customer reported a failure in connecting to an SQL Server.
The “Check” button worked OK in the “OpenLM Database Configuration” dialog box, but EasyAdmin couldn’t connect to the SQL Server. See customer’s image below.

Observed during investigation

1. The customer defined the OpenLM Server (in the “OpenLM Database Configuration” dialog box) to work with SQL server using “Windows Authentication”. This means that logging to the SQLServer was done using windows credentials.

2. The customer clicked “Check” on the “OpenLM Database Configuration” dialog box, and it worked OK because the process worked fine with these windows credentials.

3. Then he started the “OpenLM Server”. It didn’t work because it had other credentials.
The customer sent a log containing these lines:

FATAL 2011-09-26 12:11:14,276 [thread 11]  SessionProducer CreateFactory – Can’t map nhibernate domains
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0×80131904): Login failed for user ‘DPI\ORANTESTSPATIAL$’.

This means that a user named DPI (on server ORANTESTSPATIAL) could not login to the SQL Server, hence the system halts (FATAL error means that the application could not recover).

Trouble shoot process

  1. The “Database credentials” dialog box may be configured wrong, e.g.: check the “Embedded” check box in the window for Databases that are located on local drives.
  1. OpenLM Service credentials: In the “Windows Services” window, Select the “OpenLM Server” item. The “OpenLM Server Properties” dialog window opens. Select the “Log On” tab.

Here you can see under what credentials the service runs. By default we install it with “Local System Account” but some users change it.

We suggest acting according to one of these options:

1. Change the OpenLM Service credentials to that of a user who has both administrative permissions and a permission to login to the SQL server.

2. Another option is not to use the “Windows Authentication” (but “SQL Server Authentication”).

Trouble Shoot Form: Agent Item 002 (All license usage information on the Agent is blocked)

Posted on by

 

Title License usage reporting information on the Agent is blocked
Category Permissions and Roles.
Date Jul 6, 2011
Handled by Rachel
Relevant Links (link to mantis item, docs, customer correspondence etc.)
Applies to license managers FLEXlm, FLEXnet publisher, IBM LUM, HASP, RLM, Sentinel RMS, LM-X, DSLS
Applies to license model Floating licenses, Network licenses, Concurrent licenses
Symptoms Following the creation of an admin account in the OpenLM Server Configuration, all license usage information on the Agent is blocked
Observed during investigation
Trouble shoot process 1. Create a role.
2. Assign all the necessary resources, that will allow viewing details, to the new role.
3. Add users as members of this role.
Solution Found (Found/Pending/Known Issue)

Symptoms

The customer complained: “Every time I go to add an admin account in the OpenLM Server Configuration it blocks all license usage information on the Agent?  I’d like to password protect the EasyAdmin web application but still allow users to see the license usage through the agent. Is there a way to do this?”

Observed during investigation

An admin account on the OpenLM Server Configuration window was created. This can be done by unchecking, and then rechecking the “Enable permissions” highlighted checkbox. A small dialog box subsequently appears, requiring a name & password for the new user (e.g.: User name: admin, Password: admin).

Troubleshooting

When you enable permissions, users need to be assigned with a set of permissions that will allow them to view license servers’ details

1. Create a role: Login to EasyAdmin with the “admin” account. follow the steps described in the “Creating a new role” section of “OpenLM Roles and Permission Groups based security – Application Note 1006”.

2. Assign resources to the new role: After you save the new role, the “Resources” tab will become enabled. Navigate to that tab. Note that it is assigned with one default resource. Now you need to add all resources that have this name pattern “server_servername” e.g. server_srv1 (where srv1 is the name of the server that you will grant access to). In order to do so, Follow the description in section “Adding resources to a role” of “OpenLM Roles and Permission Groups based security – Application Note 1006”.

3. Assign the new role to the “admin” user: In order to do so, Follow the description in section “Assigning roles to a user or group of users” of “OpenLM Roles and Permission Groups based security – Application Note 1006”.

 

Trouble Shoot Form: Database Item 003 (Following data migration from SQL to FB, EasyAdmin doesn’t show any logging)

Posted on by

 

Title Following data migration from SQL to FB, EasyAdmin doesn’t show any logging
Category Database
Date Sep 25, 2011
Handled by Rachel
Relevant Links (link to mantis item, docs, customer correspondence etc.)
Applies to license managers FLEXlm, FLEXnet publisher, IBM LUM, HASP, RLM, Sentinel RMS, LM-X, DSLS
Applies to license model Floating licenses, Network licenses, Concurrent licenses
Symptoms Customer complained that EasyAdmin does not show any stats.
Observed during investigation
Trouble shoot process
Solution Found (Found/Pending/Known Issue)

Symptoms

A customer complains that: “I have successfully connected the new database, BUT nothings seems to be logging. I have no stats showing on the EasyAdmin screen.”

Trouble shoot process

1. Make sure the license servers list is defined at the “OpenLM Server Configuration Form”
2. All settings of OpenLM are saved in the database. When you migrate to a different database (e.g.: from SQL to FB), you need to re-enter the license servers list.

  1. Switch to Firebird.
  2. Open “OpenLM Configuration Form”, navigate to “Advanced” panel, click “Export…” button and save the settings to a file.
  3. Close “OpenLM Configuration Form”.
  4. Switch to SQLServer.
  5. Open “OpenLM Configuration Form” again and you will see that servers list is empty.
  6. Navigate to “Advanced” panel, click “Import…” and import the file you saved earlier.
  7. Click “Apply” and restart OpenLM server.
  8. Check EasyAdmin.

Trouble Shoot Form: Database Item 002 (Data migration from SQL to FB)

Posted on by

Trouble Shoot Form: Item 02.002

Title Data migration troubles, from SQL to FB.
Category Database
Date Sep 25, 2011
Handled by Rachel
Relevant Links (link to mantis item, docs, customer correspondence etc.)
Symptoms Customer reported failure to import the SQL database to FB At first.
Applies to license managers FLEXlm, FLEXnet publisher, IBM LUM, HASP, RLM, Sentinel RMS, LM-X, DSLS
Applies to license model Floating licenses, Network licenses, Concurrent licenses
Observed during investigation
Trouble shoot process
Solution Found (Found/Pending/Known Issue)

Symptoms

Customer reported failure to import the SQL database to FB.

Trouble shoot process

 

  1. Make sure the “Data Migration” tool version is compliant to the OpenLM version.
  2. A special version of the data migration tool is required for 64 bit computers.
  3. Migration of a database over to a new database that is not empty may result in failure to migrate certain tables. This is indicated by the following message: 

If this is the case, create a clean database again, and run the OpenLM_SQLServer.SQL” script to build the tables and try to migrate again.

Application Note 1003_a: OpenLM Groups License Activity Report tool

Posted on by

General:

The OpenLM Groups License Activity Report tool provides this ability to present an historical account of groups’ license usage sessions.

More details:

OpenLM provides an easy interface for monitoring software license usage. It does so for a constantly expanding variety of concurrent license manager types, e.g. FlexLM / Flexnet, Sentinel RMS Reprise RLM, MathLM, DSLS, Sentinel HASP, LM-X, IBM-LUM etc.

OpenLM is capable of reporting usage according to Users, User groups, Hosts, Host groups, Organizational Units and Projects. OpenLM’s web application – EasyAdmin – presents users’ accumulated data in a variety of real-time windows (e.g. “Active Products” and “Feature Usage Status” windows), and historical usage tables (e.g. “License usage” and “License activity” windows). See the OpenLM screenshots document for more information.

At the time of writing this revision (0.1), the current OpenLM version (1.7.3.4) is not yet capable of presenting an historical account of groups’ license usage sessions (i.e. the groups’ equivalent of single users’ “License activity” window).

The OpenLM Groups License Activity Report tool provides this ability.

OpenLM License Activity

The EasyAdmin “License activity” window provides an account for all ended sessions on license managers that are monitored by OpenLM. This window contains columns for the user name, Feature name and Session start & end times. (Some items on the image below have been deleted for privacy considerations)
The users who populate this list are members of groups in the OpenLM database. These groups may be introduced either manually, or by means of LDAP (Active Directory) synchronization.
Please refer to this Application note
Application Note 1029: LDAP (Active Directory) Synchronization
And this video
Synchronize Active Directory, and add users manually
for more information on OpenLM Groups.

In the image above, the ‘Engineering’ group has been selected for the time period from 22/10/2012 until now. In order to provide information for the Groups reporting tool, the information needs to be exported to a CSV file, using the green arrow icon (marked by a red rectangle).

OpenLM Groups reporting tool

Once the License Activity information was exported to CSV, the OpenLM Groups reporting tool may be employed:

  • Open the OpenLM Groups reporting tool.
  • Type in the exported file path.
  • Select the Date time format (in the example above it is dd/MM/yyyy)
  • Click the Start button.

After the tool is run, a CSV format file should be created and its directory presented on the desktop. This file’s default name is OpenLMGroups.csv, and it contains an historical account of OpenLM groups’ license usage

The default location for the output CSV, as well as for Log files is

For post Vista Windows’ version:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\OpenLM\OpenLMGroupsReport_Log.txt
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\OpenLM\OpenLMGroups.csv

For pre Vista Windows’ version: this would be at:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\OpenLM

Revision 0.1, Nov18 2012.

Trouble Shoot Form: OpenLM Server Item 002 (Connection to FlexLM license server failed)

Posted on by
Title Unable to connect to FlexLM license server
Category OpenLM Configuration Form
Date Nov 03, 2011
Handled by
Relevant Links
Applies to license managers FLEXlm, FLEXnet publisher
Applies to license model Floating licenses, Network licenses, Concurrent licenses, Node Locked
Symptoms No activity reported on EasyAdmin for a specific FlexLM license server
Observed during investigation A License server’s  ‘LED’ on the EasyAdmin “License Servers” window is red.
Clicking the “Check” button for one of the license servers on the OpenLM Configuration Form resulted in an error.
Trouble shoot process Check License server connectivity configuration.
Solution Found (Found/Pending/Known Issue)

Symptom

The customer complained that there was no activity on the EasyAdmin web application regarding a specific license server.

Solution

1. Make sure the License server configuration is correct:

  • Open the LMtools utility on the “Server status” tab.
  • Click the “Perform status Enquiry”. Status text appears.
  • On the “License server status” line – extract the Server name and status (e.g.: olm_lm_acad and 27000)

2. Install the OpenLM Broker on each license server machine. Refer to the Application Note for reference.

What is FLEXlm? What is FlexNet?

Posted on by

General

FLEXlm software is a license management solution that allows software vendors to limit the number of software seats available to their users. FLEXlm supports different licensing policies such as Floating (aka Concurrent) and Node Locked licenses.
These type of software systems are also called DRM Solutions (Digital Rights Management). Other software with the same functionality are SafeNet HASP, SafeNet RMS and IBM LUM.
FLEXlm is used by a great variety of software vendors, such as ESRI, Autodesk, Mathworks, PTC, Ansys, Cadence and more.

History

FLEXlm was originally a joint development of GLOBEtrotter Software and Highland Software in 1988. GLOBEtrotter was then acquired by Macrovision in 2000, which renamed the product FlexNet.
In 2008 the company was sold to Acresso Software, and it’s name was changed to Flexera. The product was named Flexera FlexNet Publisher, but is still widely referred to as FlexLM. In 2011 the Canadian Teacher’s Private Capital fund acquired Flexera.

Flexnet License Manager operation

The general structure of the Flexnet license manager is shown below:

License server manager

lmadmin or lmgrd FlexLM daemons are supplied either by the licensed FLEXenabled application publisher or by Flexera Software. Its job is to communicate with the application, and receive the license request from it.It then passes the request to the vendor daemon.

Vendor daemon

Created by the publisher, and is unique to each FlexEnabled application installed on the network. It is the vendor daemon’s job to process the license request and to either grant it or deny it, depending on the number of available licenses, and predefined license usage constraints.

License file

Created by your software supplier, and holds detailed license information such as the quantity and time extent of the license

Trusted storage

Some publishers provide trusted storage as an encrypted alternative to using license files.

Debug log and Report log

FlexNet logs written by the license server manager (lmadmin or lmgrd), typically accounting the license check-outs and check-ins, and license denials.

Option Files

Files created by license administrators to restrict license usage to specific users or user groups.