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License Management
   
 
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UNIX
Windows XP/2000/NT4

 
License Management

ATN has contracted with specific vendors to provide commercial software for use by UNC affliates. Many of these programs aid users in research and are a vital components of ATN's Statistical, Scientific, and BioScientific services. Others are requested by particular departments. Many times the contract will specify a maximum number of seats (instances of the program) can be run at a specific time; the vendors will usually provide a piece of software, called a license daemon, that makes sure that this is the case. When a user invokes the licensed program, the program contacts the license daemon to make sure its instantiation won't surpass the maximum number of seats. One of the DCI's components is a license server that runs these license daemons, allowing users to execute the commercial programs for which ATN has a site license.

This centralized management of licenses along with binaries that reside in AFS space and load sharing facilities allow a true distributed computing environment. Within this environment, any unix user can run a program which ATN has a site license off any participating machine (whether it be their own personal unix station or one of the publically available machines) and distribute the processes to other "work horse" machines.




Maintained by: dci@unc.edu
Url: http://www.unc.edu/atn/dci/dci_components/lsf/index.html
Last Updated: 06 September 2002