Balancing License Load Across Your Enterprise

By analyzing license usage on a per-server basis, you can determine if your licenses are distributed across your enterprise in the most efficient manner. For example, usage reports may reveal an unacceptable number of license denials on one license server while, for the same feature, another license server has a surplus of licenses.

The process of redistributing licenses to minimize denials is known as load balancing. Follow these steps to determine which licenses need load balancing:

1.

Generate a separate Usage Over Time report for each license server.

This report shows, on a server-by-server basis, which features are at or are surpassing available license usage. Note these feature names when analyzing subsequent reports.

2.

As supporting documentation, generate a Usage Summary report, specifying denied event types only, for those license servers reaching peak usage.

This report helps you determine the degree to which denials are happening on a given license server. Look at the data for those features identified in Step 1. If the data indicates a high percentage of denials, consider adding more licenses for the feature to this license server.

3.

To further investigate the reason for denials, generate a Raw report, specifying denied event types only and include the Reason for Denial/Checkin field, for those license servers and features reaching peak usage.

This report produces information for each license request denial including its reason. Refer to {Hyperlink}“License Denials,”{Default ¹ Font} for explanations of the different reasons for denials.

The data these two reports provide in combination helps you to determine which license servers in your enterprise have the heaviest license usage. Take some licenses away from over-utilized servers and add them to the under-utilized ones. If your licenses are node-locked, they need to be re-hosted, which will require your vendor’s assistance.