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Oscar Perez avatar image
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Oscar Perez asked Joerg Vogel commented

Network license

@Ben Wilson

Hi Ben, I have Flexsim network license, currently its working fine in the company, now, we want to extend this license to a brother company different business unit, but as you know we have firewalls and security policies. so imagine that its a different network.

In the server, we allow access from the port 8090 only from the ip local computer (in order to read the Flexsim license), from the internet explorer we do have communication to Flexsim, but when I set the license in Flexsim application it does not work....

again the network license its currently working in the company....

any other ideas?

FlexSim 17.0.0
network license
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Ben Wilson avatar image
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Ben Wilson answered Ben Wilson commented

Hi @Oscar Perez,

In all cases, you will likely need to work with your company's IT and networking staff. FlexSim can't recommend specific firewall, proxy, or other settings since we don't know anything about your network and we are not networking experts.

That said, I can give you some general ideas.

Some of our customers use a VPN to connect remote client PCs to their license server. I have never set one up, but I'm sure you have IT/networking people that can try that.

If you don't go with a VPN, you will probably need to make your license server accessible over the public internet. You can think of lmadmin or lmtools+lmgrd as similar to a webserver like Apache or IIS, in that it listens for communications and sends responses. Just like when setting up a public webserver, a public license server will need to have a public IP or otherwise be reachable from a fully qualified domain name. It will need to have the proper ports exposed through external and internal firewalls, etc. There may be other considerations as well, depending on your network and security setup.

From the license server itself, with its default settings, it does not care where in the world a client PC is. As long as the client PC can make a connection to the license server over the configured ports, it is happy to authenticate the software.

As always, even if the server and networking configuration are correct, you need to make sure that a seat is available and that the client PC is configured properly. For that I refer you to the installation instructions, step 8. Activate Client PCs, and the section Troubleshooting client-server licensing problems.

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Joerg Vogel avatar image Joerg Vogel commented ·

@Ben Wilson feel free to delete or edit this suggestion, if you think it isn't appropriate to the rules of Flexsim.

Maybe you can expose your licenses totally to the Internet through common open secure ports. Then you can set the PROJECT option keyword in the license option file to restrict the access to your licences. The project phrase should be of the quality like a really strong password. But if your users are able to read the system environment variable LM_PROJECT the licenses can accessed by everyone who knows this variable value.

There are other methodes in the option file to set rules by which you can get or restrict the access to the licences. For instance the name or IP addresses of the computers.

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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ Joerg Vogel commented ·

I think it's a great suggestion, @Jörg Vogel. Flexnet provides many different options for managing your license server. Options files in particular give the server admin many different configurable settings.

For anyone interested in exploring the more advanced aspects of Flexnet licensing, please see the Flexnet License Administration guide, which is included within the LicenseServer.zip tools download, at LicenseServer.zip>License Manager/fnp_LicAdmin_11_14_0.pdf.

You'll be more on your own when creating custom configurations for your license server - our experience with Flexnet/Flexera adheres pretty closely to what is documented in our License Server Installation Instructions. It may be necessary to contact Flexnet/Flexera, or find their online help, if you need help with more advanced or customized server configurations.

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Oscar Perez avatar image
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Oscar Perez answered Joerg Vogel commented

Thanks

everybody for your support .... I already check and all those ports are open, but here some strange things perhaps that can give you an idea of what its my problem:

For example in the client computer (outside of workgroup) I do have access to the admin screen but I need to type IP:8090... and from the other clientes who are inside of my company network I just type the IP address and I have instant access to the admin page..

Thanks!! for your help again!

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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

@Oscar Perez,

It is very strange that your lmadmin can listen over two different ports. Are you sure that internal (over port 80) and external (over port 8090) clients are referencing the same server?

I don't know how you can configure lmadmin to listen on two different ports.

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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

Assuming that lmadmin can be configured to listen over two different ports (again, I don't know that you can actually do that), it stands to reason that your internal clients could connect not just over port 80 (default HTTP - you don't need to specify the port number), but over port 8090 as well. If lmadmin is listening over both ports, and no firewall inhibits communication between lmadmin and internal clients, then the internal clients should be able to access lmadmin over both ports.

That being the case, then it would seem that your external clients' communications over port 80 are blocked, probably by a firewall configuration, where port 8090 communications are allowed via a firewall exception.

That would explain what you're seeing.

However, it is still strange to me that lmadmin can listen on both port 80 and 8090. My guess is that you are either communicating with two different license servers altogether, or two different lmadmin installations on the same server (is that even possible? Maybe with different versions of lmadmin?).

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Joerg Vogel avatar image Joerg Vogel Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

Maybe both the web server and the secure web server are configured, but the redirect option to the secure web server isn't checked.

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David Seo avatar image
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David Seo answered Ben Wilson commented

Hi.@Oscar Perez

If you can connect the admin page of 8090 port through firewall using web-browser, you can make Flexsim use the license of your server without any problem.

If your server use the Windows Server 2012(?) above, the server maybe not provide the license service normally. I found some trouble to connect the network license of new flexnet software for flexsim 2017 one month ago after upgrading the flexnet software in Windows 2012 server.

The server have used Windows server 2012 and flexnet software from some years ago and have not any troubles when using the network license of flexsim.

But after upgrading to the new flexnet for flexsim 2017, it can't service the license connection. I don't know the reason.

So I changed the server of Windows 2012 server to Windows 7 professional version. Yes. I downgraded the server.

After I changed the windows, I can connect the license of my server to have dynamic ip without any problem.

I hope my experience would help you.

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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

@david.seo,

My guess here is that your Windows Server 2012 system still had the older Flexnet licensing service installed. FlexSim 2017 requires a newer licensing service, which works with the latest lmadmin and flexsimserveractutil.exe (also required for FlexSim 2017).

It seems like many people are getting hung up on upgrading this service (or rather, skipping or missing the step where you take care of that).

I will try to make it more prominent in the instructions.

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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

"If you can connect the admin page of 8090 port through firewall using web-browser, you can make Flexsim use the license of your server without any problem."

8090 is the default port to access lmadmin's online web interface. This is different than accessing the server for licensing.

You need to make sure that the licensing port is also open on the server. By default, this will be in the 27000-27009 port range, but may be customized during the install and configuration of the license server.

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