Configuring Caché Licensing

Each Caché instance maintains an independent local view of its license capacity and current use. Each instance requires access to the key; therefore you must install and activate a license key file (typically named cache.key) on every instance, except evaluation installations.

Multiserver licenses can be shared among cooperating instances, either on the same machine or on different machines. Sharing is permitted only with multiserver keys. To use your multiserver licenses, you must configure one or more Caché license servers to allocate the Caché license units authorized by the key. All instances sharing a key must be configured to use the same license server or set of license servers. License servers can run on any computer where you run a Caché instance. A monitor process sends update messages to the license server, which coordinates license allocation when more than one instance shares a license.

The license server coordinates the views of license use maintained locally in every instance. The license server is not a Caché process; it is unaffected if a Caché instance shuts down. One license server can handle multiple instances. Therefore, you need at most one per host regardless of how many Caché instances run on a host. However, each Caché instance must have a local copy of the authorizing license key file installed.

If you run Caché servers on multiple hosts, you can configure more than one license server to provide redundancy. The license software selects one of the license servers to be the active server. The other servers are available to take over should the active server fail. This is much less critical than with previous Caché releases because the instance can continue running with users logging in and out in the absence of the license server, and the license server continues running after shutdown when it is supporting more than one instance. When configuring license servers, decide which server or servers you want to host the license server. You can configure it to run on as many hosts as you want, but more than three is excessive. Since the license server is started by a running instance, it should be configured to run on systems where you expect a Caché instance to be running consistently.

Multiple instances with different license keys and running on different platforms can use the same license server to coordinate licensing as long as each instance has its own copy of the proper cache.key file and all instances authorized by the same key use the same license servers. However license units are not summed across license keys. Cache instances using different license keys do not share license units, and users logged into two instances using different license keys will consume a separate license unit from each key.

Configuring License Servers

Configure the license servers using the Management Portal:

Navigate to the License Servers page (System Administration > Licensing > License Servers).
This displays a list of license servers configured for this instance. When there are multiple license servers configured for this instance, the row of the active license server is shaded. From this page you can edit or delete an existing server definition or add a new server.

Note:

You can also determine which license server is active using the $System.License.ShowServer() method.
Click Create License Server to configure a license server.
Enter a name for the license server in the Name box, the IP address of the host on which it runs in the Hostname/IP Address box, and the port number used by the license server in the Port box.
The license server name identifies the license server in the configuration and must be unique to a configuration.
You can enter the IP address in dotted decimal format (192.29.233.19) or in alphabetic format (mycomputer.myorg.com). If IPv6 is enabled, you can enter a colon separated format IPv6 address (2001:fecd:ba23:cd1f:dcb1:1010:9234:4085).
The license server port number must be a number between 1024 and 65535; InterSystems uses a default port number of 4001. The port numbers of redundant license servers running on different hosts do not need to be unique, but must be different from any port number used at that IP address.
Click the name of a listed license server to update the information described in the previous step.
Click Delete to remove a license server from the configuration.

After adding or deleting a license server, you must restart the InterSystems IRIS instance.

Note:

If separate instances all configure the same license server address and port, they all use the same license server; when this is the case, you should delete the default LOCAL license server (127.0.0.1) on each instance. If the same key is loaded on each instance, they share the key; if different keys are loaded on each instance, the license server serves each set of instances using each key separately.