BASIS License Types

Non-Virtual License Types

With the exception of Rental, Emergency, Evaluation, and Redundant licenses, non-virtual licenses may be issued as virtual licenses with a SAM subscription.

Perpetual

Perpetual licenses are purchased for a single host ID and require a recent version of the BASIS License Service (BLS) or BASIS License Manager (BLM). If you need to upgrade your BLS/BLM, BASIS provides standalone installations to upgrade it without upgrading any other parts of the software suite.

A perpetual license can "self-heal," detecting and automatically re-registering when host IDs change due to operating system or hardware changes. Therefore, license resets are not required, and it is not necessary to contact your BASIS representative to purchase a license reset. BASIS includes a Software Asset Management (SAM) subscription, managed via the SoftwareAssetManagement license feature line. With the new perpetual licenses, you can easily renew or add a subscription to older licenses by contacting your BASIS sales representative.

Changing a host ID on a perpetual license does not invalidate the license or require a call to a BASIS sales representative to reset the license. You just need to restart the BLS/BLM and it will retrieve a new license with the new host ID in it. If you are moving to a new machine, you need to register for the license again with the serial number and authorization number to obtain a new license to ensure that the automatic registration will continue to function.

Additionally, the BLM licensing software, FlexNet, includes a redundant license feature that allows one license with three hostids if used on up to three machines simultaneously. Licenses are dispensed as long as any two of the three are live. Redundant licenses are not eligible for virtualization.

Rental

Rental licenses are purchased for twelve months and expire at the end of that period. BASIS includes Software Asset Management (SAM) subscription with rental licenses, managed via the SoftwareAssetManagement license feature line.

Emergency

In the event your license server has crashed and you need to request a new license for a replacement machine, simply register for a new license with your existing Serial number and Authorization number. With our Perpetual Self Healing licenses there is no need for a license reset. If you do not have your Serial Number or Authorization number, there are two ways to retrieve this information:

• Accessing your b-commerce account by clicking here.

• Use the Emergency License web application to search for your information by clicking here.

Evaluation (Demo)

Evaluation licenses, for 5 days and 5 users, are available at no charge. Request this license type during the standard BBj/BLS install process. Call BASIS Sales for a custom demo license with an alternate duration and/or user count.

Developer Kit

Developer Kits (DVK) are annual licenses for the cost of one year's SAM subscription, intended for development use and not for production environments.

Virtual Machine Licensing

Cloud or virtual machine licensing facilitates running a license on virtualization software such as VMWare, XEN, or Amazon cloud, or as a single license if your host ID changes frequently. This license expires and renews automatically every 24 hours so that changing host IDs will not interrupt the production or development process.

Requirements

Virtual licenses require:

• An active SAM subscription
• A BLS/BLM included in the BBx release, BLS version 22.0+ or BLM version 10.0+

How it Works

The BLS/BLM automatically re-registers for a new license each time the virtual license machine starts up with a different host ID. It also automatically re-registers a license that has 24 hours or less to expire, once per hour for the license life, until it successfully gets a new 24-hour license.

When the BLS/BLM attempts to start with a license that contains a different COMPOSITE= hostid, it attempts to re-register the license. If it re-registers successfully, the following "errors" will appear in the blm.log or bls.log (normal behavior) and can be ignored:

        (lmgrd) BASIS exited with status 0 signal = 17
        (lmgrd) Since this is an unknown status, license server
        (lmgrd) manager (lmgrd) will attempt to re-start the vendor daemon

Simultaneously, the BLS/BLM writes an entry to the updatelic.log.

Live Migrations

At a live migration of a virtual machine, the guest is transferred from one physical host to another without a reboot. Users can continue to work with almost no interruption, and running programs will continue in their previous state on the new host. Currently, the BLS/BLM does support live migrations, as it does not automatically restart or update the license after a live migration of the guest.

Configuring the License and Proxy Servers

In order for a virtual machine and perpetual licenses to work, the system running the BLS/BLM must connect to license.poweredbybbj.com via port 80 or the encrypted port 443 to update the license. If this is only possible via the use of a proxy server, the BLS/BLM must be configured to use it.

To configure the BLS/BLM to use a proxy server, place a script called getlicense in the BLS/BLM directory.

If the BLS/BLM directory contains a file called getlicense, the BLS/BLM will execute it before trying to connect to license.poweredbybbj.com directly. If the program in the getlicense file writes a license to standard output, the BLS/BLM will accept that as the new license. If you require the proxy server to supply a program or script, this will allow you to direct the download through the proxy server.  

Here is a sample getlicense script that duplicates the existing BLS/BLM behavior:

#!/bin/sh

exec wget -q -O - https://license.poweredbybbj.com$1

Here is a sample getlicense script that uses curl instead:

#set -x
curl   --silent --show-error http://license.poweredbybbj.com$1

Windows-specific proxy server configuration

On Windows, the user account that runs the BLM/BLS must have access permissions to the proxy server. The system account will not have the correct permissions otherwise. On Windows, the BLM/BLS will use a Proxy server if the user running the BLM/BLS process is configured to use a proxy server. This can be done by configuring the proxy settings in the Windows control panel while logged in as the chosen user.

Once you have a user that is configured to use the Proxy server, you need to configure the BLM/BLS to use that user account when running the BLM/BLS from Windows Services. To configure this setting, go to Computer Management > Services and Applications, locate either BASIS License Manager or BASIS License Service, right-click it and select Properties, click on the Log On tab, and fill in the account and password fields.

License Expiration

At time intervals determined by the expiration date of any feature line (license, SAM, etc.), the BLS/BLM looks at the BASIS database over an internet connection to verify that the product serial number and composite hostid are valid. When this information and an active SAM (Software Asset Management) subscription are verified, BASIS returns a new license to the BLS/BLM. If the license is unverified and has an inactive SAM subscription, BASIS issues no licenses and requires a reset fee or a new (renewed) SAM subscription for that serial number. SAM subscriptions are defined in the license by theSoftwareAssetManagementfeature line.

The license expiration process begins at midnight, local time, of the published date. For example, if the expiration date is Monday, April 15, the BLS/BLM starts checking the status of the license after 12:00 am (local time) and attempts to update the license until 4 am. If it is unsuccessful, it will expire that evening at 11:59 p.m. The type of license determines its duration and expiration date.

See Also

Benefits of the ‘SoftwareAssetManagement’ Feature Line

Licensing - Connection-based

BASIS License Service (BLS) Overview

BASIS License Manager (BLM) Licensing Overview