Newbie questions...
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Hi!
I just discovered CADminTools through some of my mechanical design co-workers.
I support electrical design tools - but also take care of the license servers in our area.
A few items I didn't find on the CADminTools web pages:
- Most of the CADminTools code seems to be PC-oriented. All of our license servers are on Sun Solaris systems. Can I use CADminTools on these systems?
- Most of my license servers are FlexLM triads (i.e., each vendor daemon runs on 3 redundant servers). Do the CADminTools understand data collected from server triads?
- Some of the license limits in CADminTools I've seen on these forums seem awfully low. I don't consider my site very large, but I have 24 different vendor daemons with about 1140 feature lines (I'm in a research lab environment; we use a range of different tools). The discussion I've seen about 9 vs. 15 features doesn't begin to approach this. Am I mis-interpreting the CADminTools limits I've seen? In this regard, re-entering the data for 1140 feature lines on a web page seems redundant when the data already exist in the license files. Again, I suspect I may be missing something here.
Thanks for any insights.
Regards,
Phil
Maryland, USA
Hi Phil
Great to hear from you! And it's good to hear a different perspective on the whole thing... I'm always happy to hear when new people get involved in the project.
* CADminTools started as a basic package to help me keep track of license usage across 20+ sites, using 100+ licenses of 3 different codes (Pro/E, Pro/I, Pro/Mech)
* It's all based on Windows, since that's all I've known. I've heard from guys using it on Unix too, and they seem to have success there. At the end of the day, it's just a web-based graphing tool with add-on database for storage. As long as you can somehow report the flexlm usage into a text file, you can use the web-page to parse the data + sort, etc... I'd be keen for you to contribute code, etc... after all it's an open-source project.
* Since I have no experience of triads, I can't comment, but I'd reckon it'd work...
* When you mention the figures you're dealing with, right enough it does dwarf the 15 code limit. I've got a buddy Peter in Germany, who's helped with the CADminTools project, and who's also using these kinds of amounts of daemons on electrical-type licenses... maybe he can chip in here with suggestions?
How do you currently track license usage? - Do you have an ongoing log? - or just do occasional check-ups? I take it you'd track the 24 licenses, not the 1140 (surely that's way too many to make sense of?)
Again, good to hear from you... check on the blog @ http://cadmincouk.blogspot.com - I'll probably write something about it there soon...
Happy holiday as you say..
Cheers
Edwin
Hi,
since end of last week our license server(s) is/are responding with their real name and no more with their node name. (We have one server which is mirrored. Until last week lmutil requests got the node name as part of the response. now it is the current real server name.) When using the two real servers in CT I get doubbled licenses available (this is clear). One solution in my eyes is to set the Servername for the specific license feature statically in the lic_log.bat. But is there another way to add alternative names for a server, or asked the other way round how difficult is it to implement this? I think this might be a solution for Phil's triad. Please correct me if I'm false.
So long
Peter
Peter
Interesting problem... I'm trying to think about this... can you provide screenshots to explain what's happening? - eg: previous + current outputs from lmutil?
Like you say, there maybe another way round it... I'd like to investigate further.
Cheers
Edwin
Edwin -
Thanks for the prompt reply, and useful input.
We're currently using Macrovision's SAMreport to do basic reporting (we already have dependable scripting to handle server management, and so have no need for the whole SAMsuite functionality).
If you're familiar with the Macrovision SAMsuite/SAMreport to FLEXnet Manager effort, you also likely know that Macrovision is basically pushing smaller sites out of their product line, using massive cost increases and requiring far more resources for the new tool set. We have what is known as a 'legacy license' for our SAMreport; a very affordable, flexible way to own the tool that is no longer available (and, apparently, this license's existence is much lamented at Macrovision). FLEXnet Manager's capabilities and cost jump farther ahead than we need - or can afford.
So I'm looking at other alternatives.
No, we don't really look at all 1140+ features - but we do review a large number of them. Some of the toolsets I support (including things like Mentor Graphics, Cadence and Agilent) are very broad; just knowing usage at the vendor daemon level isn't helpful. I need to know how various tools are being used - and by whom. Many times, we aren't really looking at particular features until we notice a problem - but, at that point, I need to have the historical data available.
Since my site doesn't have a huge number of users, complete historical data isn't outrageous to deal with. For example, my FlexLM .rl files (the reportlog SAMreport uses) for the last year for all 24 vendors (yes, all 1140+ feature lines) is well under 100Mb. And with that, I can go back in time and look at anything I need to. We generally keep several years worth of .rl data. Not that it's terribly important, but it's nice to be able to go back and use real data for usage projections, etc.
But, alas, my SAMreport capabilities will disappear at some point.
I'm already using Big Brother for semi-real-time, web-based license reporting (i.e., current checkouts only). So it isn't a stretch of the imagination to think of saving this data in a format that allows report generation later on. Yes, as Macrovision is fond of telling us, lmstat doesn't really provide all details of usage (the way a .rl file can), but it would be good enough for our purposes.
Thanks for your CADminTools efforts. I look forward to learning more (and I also like your work on indundee.co.uk!).
Regards,
Phil
Phil
Thanks again for your message - it makes interesting reading... I have no prior experience of the SAM range... but have heard of the expense, etc... to be honest, I'd never come across it until CADminTools was fairly well-developed.
I'm interested in developing CADminTools further to deal with the kind of volumes you mention... can you help me by giving some insight into how you use the SAM system?
* How do you currently delve into the data?
* Do you open the raw files in text format, or is there a cool graphical interface?
* How much data is stored at each point? - eg: username/computername/license/time/etc?
Cheers
Edwin
Hi Edwin,
hi Phil,
I hadn't much time the last weeks due to exams and some other projects at work. But now I'm back :-)
For monitoring more than 15 licenses / features I patched the corresponding files and created a .diff file for easy patching of the standard installation. The .mdb file has to be modified by hand (I didn't find a possibility to automate this, yet.) I can provide this patch. How about a tiddler in the doc describing this procedure? I can send you the tiddler to import it to the docs, Edwin.
We're currently using an increased limit of 30 licenses to monitor. Currently we are running data collection for 104 features (9 vendor deamons). At the moment I only have an installation on a weak PC in a virtual environment and data collection takes about 1 minute per run. The weekly data file size is between 1,1MB to 1,9MB. It's planned to move the installation on a Sun Solaris machine, too.
I thought out some let's name it 'feature requests'. I'm thinking of sdding an extra listbox to the lic.asp. The "licenses" box split up in two - one for the licenses and one for the features. The licenses and features could be stored in the database file with relations, so it would be possible to select the licenses to be displayed first, and than select the features of the selected lics you want to see. I know this would surely be an enormous work and change in the structure.
When using bigger amounts of licenses perhaps it would be useful to split up the data files into the single licenses. This could speed up the parsing of the data files in lic.asp? I'm not really experienced in ASP so I'm not sure if part of this is possible and how complicated it is.
BTW for monitoring Teamcenter Enterprise license usage I'm using a self-made script to get useful data files (made out of real-time logs with of the INs and OUTs. If this could be interesting for someone I could add the to the patch tracker.
Cheers
Peter
Hi Peter - yes, please do send me the tiddler explaining the db tweak - love to see it.
We're starting to see CADminTools in more of these applications with multiple licenses, etc.
I'll look at the Licenses + Features possibility, maybe in 3.3 or 3.4...
Also., your custom script for teamcenter maybe useful for other apps... I'd worked out a way to track standalone autocad simply by adding a line to the startup script - pinging the CADminTools lic_log files...
Cheers
Edwin
Hi Phil,
just talked to one of our admins, getting the info that they where interested in using flexlm triads in the past but the didn't do it because of the known problems when one server comes back. Does this work now? Which version are you using? Are there special "tricks"/patches/etc needed to get it work?
Regards
Peter