Background Information about Concurrent Licensing

The following process describes what occurs each time that a user in your organization starts the product that is using concurrent licensing.

A user launches the product.

The FlexEnabled code on the user’s machine establishes a connection with the FlexNet Licensing Server and requests a license.

The FlexNet Licensing Server checks whether a license is available. If a license is available, the FlexNet Licensing Server checks it out. In addition, the server sends a message to the user’s machine. The message grants permission to run the product.

The FlexEnabled code on the user’s machine receives the message and opens the product.

When the user exits the product, the FlexEnabled code on the user’s machine sends a message to the FlexNet Licensing Server, and the license is checked back in, making it available for another machine.

Tip:If the user needs to be disconnected from the same network as the FlexNet Licensing Server, the user can borrow the license of the product for a specified number of days. Once the borrowed license has expired, the product cannot be launched on the user’s machine until another license is checked out on that machine.

For more information, see Borrowing AdminStudio Licenses from the License Server.

Components of a FlexNet Licensing Server

A FlexNet Licensing Server consists of the following components.

FlexNet Licensing Server Components
Component	Description
FlexEnabled Product	A FlexEnabled product is one that uses FlexNet Publisher Licensing Toolkit to implement its license models. InstallShield, AdminStudio, and InstallAnywhere are all FlexEnabled products. These FlexEnabled products communicate with the FlexNet Licensing Server to request a license when needed.
License Server Manager	The license server manager on the FlexNet Licensing Server handles the initial contact with the FlexEnabled product, passing the connection on to the vendor daemon. The license server manager starts and maintains vendor daemons for serving license rights. One version of the license server manager is available: lmadmin. This is the latest version of the license server manager. This version has a graphical user interface.
Vendor Daemon	A vendor daemon is a file that is associated with the vendor who developed the FlexEnabled product. If you are using a FlexNet Licensing Server to manage licenses for InstallShield, AdminStudio, or InstallAnywhere, as well as for products that are developed by other companies and are also FlexEnabled, your FlexNet Licensing Server will have one vendor daemon for Flexera, and one additional vendor daemon for each additional vendor. The vendor daemon handles the communication between the FlexEnabled product and the FlexNet Licensing Server; it also keeps track of how many licenses are checked out, how many are borrowed and when each expires, and who has the checked-out and borrowed licenses.

Note the following about the FlexNet Licensing Server components:

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Communication via TCP/IP—InstallShield, AdminStudio, and InstallAnywhere communicate with the vendor daemon through TCP/IP network communications. The products and the daemon processes can run on separate machines on your network, across any size wide-area network.

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Machine-independent communication—The format of the traffic between the Flexera product and the FlexNet Licensing Server is machine independent, allowing for heterogeneous networks. This means that the FlexNet Licensing Server machine and the machine that is running the Flexera product can be different hardware platforms.

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Vendor daemon termination scenario—If the vendor daemon terminates for any reason, all users lose their licenses (though this does not mean that the applications suddenly stop running). Users normally regain their license automatically when the license server manager restarts the vendor daemon; however, they may exit the product if the vendor daemon remains unavailable.