FlexLM and VMWARE

[PaoloB]

I'm planning an installation of FLEXLM 10.1.5 under a VMware server

It is supported by Autodesk ?
Exist an official Autodesk document ?
This issue is urgent and very important.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

See this link.
http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5121109

Not an answer but an indication of problems running Flex on VMware.

John Postlewait
IS Department
George Butler Associates, Inc.

[TravisNave]

I have read a few problems with VMWare and the LM. Furthermore, I have had customers call in to support with similar issues.

The fact of the matter is that VMWare is a virtual server that shares the hardware of its host and are sometimes emulated... especially the NIC settings. The problem with the Virtual Server is that sharing the NIC can sometimes cause undesired problems in the NLM that would not normally occur on a regular server. Also, VMWare is depended on its host. If the host goes down, so does your virtual server. If VMWare closes, crashes, etc... so does your virtual server. If your file corrupts... you get the picture.

The License Manager is very flexible and will run on nearly anything from NT4 to 2003 (yes, it can.) Furthermore, there is very little network overhead or hard drive overhead. Just put it on a real server somewhere and save yourself some headache.

I still don't know why people want to put these on a Virtual Server. Don't get me wrong, I love VMWare... but not for something like this.

[PaoloB]

Thanks so much. My customer want to install FlexLM under VMWARE server, because he don't have other server to put the program.
I say him what are the problems .

Thank you very much

Paolo

[TravisNave]

Then what server would he be installing the VMWare on? This doesn't make sense to me. The NLM can be installed pretty much anywhere, so long as it is always available to the users.

However, Workstation clients have a limit on concurrent connections. If you have more than 10 licenses, this could be a problem.

[Anonymous]

I run FlexLM in a VMware machine, Windows 2003, 450 users (plus) and -> no problems.
We have reasons to use a VMware machine sharing one box in our Datacenter. This computer would be totally wasted just serving as FlexLM server.
And I could come up with several reasons to use VMware.
There was a small problem with FlexLM hanging from time to time, and so I set the server to restart every Sunday at midnight.
About changing servers, you need a new license file for each server and Mac Adress.

[TravisNave]

That's what I don't understand. The NLM is so small and uses virtually no network overhead, you don't need a dedicated server just for it. You can put it on any server without any side-effects. Adding a VMWare virtual server just shares everything with its host, creating more overhead than just the NLM alone.

I love VMWare for multiple OS testing and a host of other uses... but for the NLM, it just doesn't make any sense. Especially if people can't work if the server takes a dump. I guess the only benefit would be if you wanted to make a redundant server setup and didn't have enough boxes to pull it off.

[TravisNave]

I even run the Autodesk Network License Manager on my laptop. It takes up about 9MB of HDD space. It uses about 5.5MB of RAM when running as a service. And when communicating licenses to the application, it uses 0.06% Network Utilization.

Just a thought...

[Anonymous]

We have a Datacenter. We have about 30 or 40 servers, from e-mail to storage, to databases, to VOIP, to applications, you name it.
We have a centralized fiber optics ring serving 28 buildings.
We have 450 users in 20 different locations.
We have several system managers for different areas.
I, CAD Manager, run a specific server to host FlexLM, part of my CAD portal, installation images for centralized network deployment, users databases...
I don't need a physical computer to do all this. I just need a Virtual Machine, a VPN connection and I run it all mostly from home.
I wouldn't even dare to think of having it all in my laptop... 🙂

[TravisNave]

I just have it there for support reasons. I do not run the production NLM on my laptop, of course. That would be on a physical server on the WAN.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if Autodesk supports it but it works very well.

A VMware server can be copied to a new hardware and the AutoCAD licenses
work immediately.Of course there cannot be another VM with the same MAC.

Running a virtual server is good option if you have blade servers and a SAN.

wrote in message news:5145425@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm planning an installation of FLEXLM 10.1.5 under a VMware server

It is supported by Autodesk ?
Exist an official Autodesk document ?
This issue is urgent and very important.

Thanks