LSF Version 7.3 - Administering Platform LSF

Administering Platform LSF 169
Platform LSF Licensing
Multiple FLEXlm License Server Hosts
This section applies to permanent licenses only. Read this section if you are
interested in the various ways you can distribute your licenses. This is valuable if
you are interested in having some form of backup in case of failure. Compare with
Selecting a license server host on page 162 to make an educated decision.
Although it is not necessary, you may want to understand how the FLEXlm license
server behaves prior to setting up your license server hosts. For a brief description
on how FLEXlm works, see FLEXlm license server on page 154.
If you are concerned about the reliability of your license server host, you can
distribute the LSF licenses across multiple FLEXlm license server hosts. If one
license server host goes down, LSF will not lose all of the available licenses. There
are two ways to configure multiple license server hosts:
◆ Multiple license files with multiple license server hosts. For more information,
see Distributed license server hosts on page 169.
◆ Single license file with three redundant license server hosts. For more
information, see Redundant license server hosts on page 170.
Distributed license server hosts
Configuring multiple license server hosts is optional. It provides a way to keep LSF
running if a license server host goes down. There are two ways to configure multiple
license servers. This section describes distributed license server hosts. See
Redundant license server hosts on page 170 for information on the other
configuration.
Distributing licenses over multiple server hosts provides a fallback, in case your
license server daemons fail.
With this method, you run multiple license server daemons, each with its own
license file. Each license file has a
SERVER line keyed to the license server host it is
assigned to. The cluster is partially licensed as long as any one license server
daemon is running, and fully licensed when all license server daemons are running.
When a license server host is unavailable, the licenses managed by that host are
unavailable. You decide how many LSF licenses to put on each license server host.
Enable multiple
license server hosts
See the procedures for installing and configuring a permanent license. There are a
few differences when you use distributed license server hosts:
1 See Getting a permanent license on page 159. You must obtain multiple license
files, with your total number of licenses divided appropriately among the
license server hosts. You must provide the following information for each
license server host:
❖ Host name and FLEXlm host ID
❖ The products and number of licenses you want to be managed by this host
2 See LSF_LICENSE_FILE parameter on page 160. Specify the location of all the
licenses in LSF_LICENSE_FILE, not just one. Use a pipe (
|) onUNIX and
Linux or a colon (
:) on Windows to separate each location. List the primary
license server host first (the one you want LSF to contact first).