Q. What licensing system does RTDA use?
A. Recent Versions
The 2010.06 version introduced a 'keyfile' licensing method for use with NetworkComputer and LicenseMonitor. For NC and LM, keyfile is an alternative to RLM (see below). FlowTracer and WorkloadAnalyzer continue to be licensed with RLM.
When using a keyfile, you place a 'license.key' file in the server's configuration (.swd) directory to enable the software. When using a keyfile, you do not need to start RLM. The keyfile specifies a single licensed quantity, which is users for LM, and job slots for NC. A keyfile is made for a specific product, hostid, port, and quantity.
Starting with release 8.2.0, RTDA began using Reprise License Manager (RLM) from Reprise Software. This system is similar to FLEXlm and was created by the original author of FLEXlm.
There is a master daemon called 'rlm', and a vendor daemon. The vendor daemon for RTDA is called 'rtdad'. Both these processes must be running on the machine whose hostid is in the HOST line in the RLM license file.
The management commands are similar to FLEXlm commands, but prefixed with an 'r', for example, rlmstat instead of lmstat.
There have been several different feature sets used for RLM licensing, and license versions, 8.2 and 8.25, an higher. RTDA software from 8.2.0 through 8.2.4 used 8.2 licenses, and versions from 8.2.5 through 2009.03 use 8.25 licenses. Later versions need features of even version of the software or higher, e.g. for 2010.06, you need 2010.06 or higher license features.
Older RTDA Versions
RTDA software from the Epoch through release 7.1.6 used RTDA's internally-developed licensing. In this system, any vovserver running on the PRIMARY HOST whose hostid was encrypted in the license file would serve the license to hosts on the LAN. The vovservers communicated via UDP.
By convention, the license was served by a vovproject named 'licadm' that ran on on the primary license host. This project's only purpose was to serve the license, and thus it had no vovslaves. The license server was managed by the 'vovlicensemgr' command.
RTDA periodically changed the encryption key for the internally-developed licensing system. There were three license regimes:
- The Epoch through 5.4.6
- 5.4.7 through 7.0
- 7.1 through 7.1.6 (last to use RTDA licensing)