Network licensed products re-prompt on launch ~50% of the time

[BSchubring]

Hello,

I have a feeling this isn't a FDS specific question, it might happen to any network licensed products.  We are hosting a few networked seats of FDS Premium on a local server (which also hosts our Vault licenses). When users launch a FDS application and it checks for its license, they are often prompted by the FLEXnet License Finder which forces them to re-type the server information. (which it sometimes accepts, and sometimes does not) Keep in mind, they are contacting the same server, and same service on that server that hosts Vault licenses they use, so I know the lines of communication are clear.

I have tried using both serverIP and servername.domain.com during product setup in the licensing portion. Both work, and both occasionally re-prompt later on. I'm suspicious that it may be a network timeout issue, as many of the users are sitting in a location that is using a BOVPN to connect to our main network. (they typically have ping times of 300ms +/- 100 back to the server) Perhaps increasing the amount of time the client is willing to wait for a response might help? If so, how might that be done?

Any other reccomendations as to possible causes for this issue? It's causing quite a bit of headache especially when coupled with Vault because users open drawings from the Vault client, only to have AutoCAD fail to launch and their drawings close. Thank you!

[TravisNave · Accepted solution]

This is almost certainly caused by network latency.  You can extend the timeout period with a system environment variable that will resolve this issue.

Create a system environment variable called FLEX_TIMEOUT and give it a value of one-million.  Each increase in the value of a million equates to one additional second of latency allowed. 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=7574782&linkID=9240617

Couple this with the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE variable with the @SERVERNAME and you should be set.

Good Luck!

[BSchubring]

Thanks, that sounds like exactly what I need. I'll post back if it doesn't solve the issue.

[BSchubring]

Thought I would post the batch file I will use on the affected PCs in case someone needs a quick and easy way to create this Environment variable on multiple PCs. Replace X with the value you prefer. (for example, X000000 would change to 1000000 for one second)

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Increasing the time FlexLM will wait for a network license to X seconds.

setx FLEXLM_TIMEOUT X000000

ECHO Did this process report success in the line above?
pause

[TravisNave]

Nice job!  However, that appears to create a user variable and not a system variable. 

You will want to use:

setx /M FLEXLM_TIMEOUT X000000

[BSchubring]

Ah, you are right, thanks for noticing. Can't edit the above post, posting modified script here. With the /M switch, the batch file must be Run as Administrator.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Increasing the time FlexLM will wait for a network license to X seconds.

setx /m FLEXLM_TIMEOUT X000000

ECHO Did this process report success in the line above?
pause

More Info on SetX

[BSchubring]

Just dropping back by to follow up. This was the fix for us, thank you! About 2 seconds did the trick pretty darn reliably.

[TravisNave]

Sweet.  Thanks for providing the batch idea.  Definitely a keeper.