Will single-user Arnold licenses work on a small local network 3ds Max render farm?

[Mchapman]

I have a small backburner-based render farm that consists of the following:

• 1 VM server that acts as the Manager and Monitor
• 6 physical servers that act as render nodes
• 4 workstations with valid 3ds Max licenses that submit jobs

The farm operates over our local network, and has been working fine until today. Last year's Arnold network license expired yesterday, and I just discovered that our reseller swapped our Arnold license type over to single-user for this year's quote. In the past, the Manager also hosted our Arnold licenses through Autodesk's LMTool. Now, with single-user licenses for our render nodes, that is no longer possible. Is it even possible to use single-user licenses for my render farm, or do I need to find a way to swap back to multi-user licenses. If I need to swap to multi-user licenses, am I stuck eating the cost of our single-user licenses? Any help would be greatly appreciated as this has completely shut down my ability to render.

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

You have to sign in on each machine. The MAXtoA install includes the Arnold License Manager (it's a separate executable that provides the Sign In user interface).

https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/x/84UfBg

[Mchapman]

Thanks for your answer. i might add to it the location of that License Manager, as it took me a while to find it.

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\MAXtoA_2020

It's buried within a couple levels of hidden folders.

[Stephen.Blair]

True.

I was lazy and left it to the links on that page I provided.

It is better communication to pull out the relevant snippet into the response, instead of forcing the reader to click through links.