License Types

What kind of licenses are available?

There are three different basic license types available as listed below:

Node-Locked (NL) licenses have no seat count associated with them, but they are limited running on (node-locked) to a particular HostID.  This means there is no limit on the number of instances of the code running at once. For example on a node-locked workstation license, any number of people can be post-processing results at once.

  • A user on a different workstation can connect remotely (using VNC or SSH for example) into the node-locked US3D workstation to do what they need to.
  • Any number of users can be running the code at once on the workstation
  • Node-locked licenses are incompatible with cluster usage.

Named-User (NU) licenses also have no seat count associated with them.  This means there is no limit on the number of instances of the code running at once.  However, execution is limited to the particular named user. Named users will still have a cluster or workstation license, depending on the number of processors they need to use.  This is the most powerful type of license for a single US3D user.

  • Only the specific named user is allowed to run the code, and this user must correspond to an actual person.  Named user licenses may not be shared between users.

Floating Licenses (FL) have a seat count associated with them.  To run the code, a license must be checked out from the license server, and there are a fixed number of license seats available, depending on the number that were purchased.  Once the code completes, the license seat is returned to the pool to be checked out by another user.

  • The number of simultaneous instances of the code running at one time is limited to the number of floating license seats that are available.
  • The license server software is included with US3D.
  • FL licenses are tied to the HostID of system running the license server software.
  • FL require LAN access to the license server.  Because LAN access is required, FL licenses cannot cross air-gapped networks.

There are currently two levels of available processor limits:

Workstation (WS) licenses are limited to running on 16 cores during a single instance.

  • A WS license can also be used on a cluster, but is limited in processor count.
  • The physical number of cores in a CPU is not important, what matters is the number of processors used by a single MPI job.

Cluster (CL) licenses have no associated processor core count.

  • Cluster licenses must be either named-user or floating.
  • Cluster licenses may also be used for running on workstations.
  • A cluster named-user (CL,NU) can run as many simultaneous instances of the code as they need and as computing resources allow.  This is the most powerful license type available to a single user.