License Manager Option File - How to Checkout/Borrow Specific Licenses?

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01-26-2015 09:30 PM
MatthewRyan2
New Contributor III

Hi Everyone,

I have a very specific scenario which I want to confirm does NOT work. What I would like to do is allow a specific license to be checked our OR borrowed and for that license I would like this ability to be available to only a specific group of people. To help illustrate I will give a link to the ESRI documentation and I will show the groups and types of licenses I want this accomplished with.

ESRI Doco here

That^ should describe the options file and how to use it. below are the things I have in the options file:

GROUP CartoGroup tzjohn epnewto gdtowse plulare fastuar kgjaela

GROUP EnginGroup pbgreld hjcruco rrdale dljacob tjhobsi

RESERVE 4 VIEWER GROUP CartoGroup

RESERVE 3 VIEWER GROUP EnginGroup

Now the above license server stores licenses from two different business groups. Their licenses belong to their group only and are NOT to be shared between each group. There are 7 Viewer licenses installed on the license server. What I want is for the CartoGroup to be able to BORROW two licenses however I want their 4 licenses to still only be reserved for them to be checked out. So I would think that the below configuration is closest to what I would want but it won't work.

GROUP CartoGroup tzjohn epnewto gdtowse plulare fastuar kgjaela

GROUP EnginGroup pbgreld hjcruco rrdale dljacob tjhobsi

RESERVE 4 VIEWER GROUP CartoGroup

RESERVE 3 VIEWER GROUP EnginGroup

INCLUDE_ENTITLEMENT EFL546888774-1010 GROUP CartoGroup

INCLUDE_ENTITLEMENT EFL224676441-1010 GROUP CartoGroup

The reason why the above settings won't work is because tzjohn and epnewto can BORROW a license which means their group is using two licenses. Then all the other users in the group could check out up to 4 licenses as well which leaves a total of 6 licences being used by the CartoGroup! The CartoGroup needs to only have access to BORROW/CHECK OUT up 4 licenses as once combined.

Does anyone know how to configure the options file so I can allow borrowing and checking out licenses for ONE group up to the amount of licenses they own?

Server: Windows 2008 r2

ArcGIS Server 10.2.2

ArcMap 10.2.2

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12 Replies
RebeccaStrauch__GISP
MVP Emeritus

i Have had a similar situation for years, and with each new release of license manager, I'm hoping that the new LM will have additional options.  I am on 10.3 now, and I still do not see a good "option" for a mix and limit when it comes to borrowed licenses.  I have tried your logic before which always sounds like it has potential, but never was able to get it to work.  I didn't put much effort into lately, however, since instead of a dozen or so user names as you show, I have about 350, and listing them all in groups is too much overhead, and in my situation, all have the same privileges, but I want to limit borrowed counts.

My very clunky way to do it is to have a separate LM just for borrowing licenses.  That means I have a few limited licenses assigned to another LM that the user has to switch to if they need to borrow.  Not an ideal situation at all, but it assures that most license are kept in the office for the majority to use (we have about 53 core licenses for the 350 users).   This is a very inefficient way to handle this, for many reasons, but is necessary right now.

So, I'm hoping someone has a good answer for you that maybe will work for us too.

ArcGIS Idea - Maximum number of licenses to borrow      (CORRECTED link, per Xander's comments below.  Note: must be logged in to "promote", but can view without login)

The above link is to the ideas page for topic "Maximum number of licenses to borrow".   There are other ideas in the ideas.esri.com page re: LM.  just search for "Licenses Manager Borrow" or similar on that site, and promote any you think would help.

Edited: fixed link and added comment about logging in when you want to promote an idea.  -ras

XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

The correct link to the idea is: ArcGIS Idea - Maximum number of licenses to borrow

+1 for it!

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RebeccaStrauch__GISP
MVP Emeritus

Thanks Xander.  Same location, but for some reason mine didn't give me the Title.   Tried to fix but....

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XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

The link using the c.na9.visual.force/apex location is due to being logged in when you copied the url. I copied it without while being logged out (hence the ideas.arcgis.com). It is one of the problems that exist with the URLs from the different Esri sites.

RebeccaStrauch__GISP
MVP Emeritus

Good to know, for future posts!

Xander, I  fixed the link in my post.  Thanks again for the info.

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MatthewRyan2
New Contributor III


Thanks for your reply Rebecca, we also have a large number of users/licenses/business groups however I have simplified the problem to make it easy to understand. We wanted to use a single license manager so that everything could be kept in one place for easy management. One LM for borrowing and one for checking out is an option though.

It is important to note that "INCLUDE_ENTITLEMENT" does not actually reserve the license. The license is actually publicly available to be checked out. (will add this to my original post). ArcGIS Ideas wasn't on my radar either so this will (hopefully) help in some way.

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MatthewRyan2
New Contributor III

Ok I have looked around the ArcGIS Ideas site for something which is similar to our problem and cannot find it so I created an Idea. I don't actually know how seriously ESRI takes the ideas posted up there but please promote it in hope that they fix out issues. Having two license managers is terrible for functional and managerial reasons.

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MatthewRyan2
New Contributor III

Pro tip: include the link to the Idea you direct people to XD This is the one I created.

http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087E0000000CvCxIAK

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by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Does this ESRI KB article acknowledge your issue?

42957 - ArcGIS License Manager options file exhibits issues with use of INCLUDE and INCLUDE_ENTITLEM...

If I understand your problem and the KB article correctly, then you should also add

INCLUDE 4 VIEWER GROUP CartoGroup

This will allow borrowing and checking out licenses for CartoGroup, but it does not seem to solve the restriction of 4 total licenses used.

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