Administration Tasks

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter gives an overview of the License Management Facility, and explains how the License Management Facility helps you manage your software licenses.

Warning: To use License Management Facility on your system, UNIX must support shared memory allocation and use.

1.1 Features of the License Management Facility

The License Management Facility controls and monitors MERANT licensed products. It helps you ensure that users are properly licensed to use these products. The License Management Facility:

Makes users aware of licensing requirements.
Enables you to monitor product usage.
Enables you to review your licenses, and update them by redistributing existing licenses or adding new ones.
Records data that you can use in a license audit.

1.2 Licenses and License Keys

When you receive your first delivery of a licensed product from MERANT, you receive:

The product software and the License Management Facility software (although you do not need to install the License Management Facility if it is already installed).
The product documentation. For some products this is partially or entirely paperless, and might be on the same CD as the product software, or on a separate CD.
The License Management Facility documentation, which includes this Administrator's Guide, and the on-disk document terminfo.txt. (These on-disk documents are located in the directory where the Licence Management Facility is installed; this is /usr/lib/mflmf or /opt/lib/mflmf by default, depending on the operating system.)
A License Key Folder on which the license key is printed.

When you subsequently receive additional licenses for a licensed product from MERANT, you receive:

A License Key Folder on which the license key is printed.

The license key enables you to use the product. Each license key enables you to use the product on one machine only and for a given number of users. Typically the license key is not limited by time. However, it can be time-limited if, for example, it is for a product under evaluation.

For details of your license obligation refer to your MERANT End User Product License agreement shipped with the MERANT licensed product, or contact your Sales Representative.

The license key unlocks and activates the licensed product. Before users can use the product, you have to install the license key into the license database. You can add more license keys later, to increase the number of users who can use your licensed product, or activate another licensed product. You can install the additional license keys at any time, without having to reinstall the licensed product.

Important: The license key is proof of a valid license.

The license key is the valuable part of the licensed product. Without it, you cannot use the product. We recommend, therefore, that you treat the license key like any other valuable asset and keep it in a secure location before and after use.

Please be aware that we cannot issue a replacement license key if you lose the original.

64-bit Server Express:
If you install the 64-bit version of Server Express 2.0, you are issued with licenses for the 64-bit version. Any licenses associated with a 32-bit version of Server Express are disabled; you are warned of this when you install the 64-bit version. The 64-bit licenses enable you to use Server Express in both 64-bit and 32-bit working modes.

If for any reason you have been issued with fewer 64-bit licenses than you originally had with your 32-bit version of Server Express, you should contact your Sales Representative to purchase the required number of licenses.

1.3 Administering and Using the License Management Facility

As administrator, you are responsible for installing the License Management Facility on each system and making sure that it is running continuously. You are also responsible for installing the license keys for the licensed products, and you can use the License Management Facility to monitor the number of licenses, so that you know when to order more.

See the chapter Adminstration Tasks for more details.

Normally, users do not see any difference between products that are licensed by the License Management Facility and those that are not.

However, if a user attempts to use a product for which the License Management Facility cannot find a valid license, the License Management Facility issues a warning that no license key is found, or that the number of purchased licenses has been exceeded. The License Management Facility then terminates this execution of the licensed product.

1.4 Components of the License Management Facility

License Management Facility has four components:

The License Administration Services - This is mainly for managing the licenses. The License Administration Services enables you to install and uninstall licenses, and to check which licenses are present by browsing the license database.
The License Manager - This responds to license requests from the License Manager clients and issues license units. It also keeps an audit trail.
The License Manager client - This is found in each licensed product or component. The License Manager client requests the License Manager to issue license units.
The license database - This holds all the license keys available on the system. There is one license database on each system, which is created and updated by the License Administration Services. The License Manager reads the license database to update its in-memory copy of available licenses.

The License Management Facility runs at your site on every machine that runs a MERANT licensed product. For example, the setup on one machine might be as in the following illustration.

Figure 1-1: Components of the License Management Facility

Administration Tasks