Monitor distribution of NC slots and licenses
Sometimes, Altair Accelerator (formerly NetworkComputer) administrators are asked to show how the slots and licenses are used.
Altair Accelerator Licensing
The method you use do to this depends on the type of licensing. There are three types of licenses:
+ Altair keyfile
+ Reprise License Manager (RLM), with enterprise features
+ RLM with cpu_* features (no longer issued, though licenses remain in the field; see note below)
The Altair keyfile license is the simplest kind. It is an encrypted file that is read directly by the NC vovserver, and enables the NC vovserver and a specific number of slots. With a keyfile, there is no need to set up a license server.
You may visualize that the vovserver always 'checks-out' all available licenses, and grants them to the vovslaves as they connect, up to the limit of the number of slots in the keyfile.
RLM with enterprise features (server_nc and slots_nc) is similar in behavior to keyfile, except that vovserver needs to check out features from RLM to determine how many slots it can grant to connecting vovslaves.
The number of slots may be a fixed number, or 'All', or 'Auto'. 'All' means that the NC vovserver should check out as many slots as RLM will permit. The 'Auto' value enables a mode where vovserver checks out features from RLM as vovslaves connect, and checks features back in when vovslaves are stopped.
Checking License Utilization
With keyfile or RLM licensing, you can use the browser UI Admin->License page to monitor the license http(s)://nc-host:nc-port/cgi/license.cgi (substitute your local values for protocol, host, and port).
Figure: Example of RLM-enterprise licensing in use
With RLM licensing, in addition to the Admin->License page in NC, you can set up a monitor in LicenseMonitor to track the NC features in use. This is especially useful for multi-site setups where the RLM-enterprise 'Auto' is in use.
Checking License Usage from the Command Line
With any form of licensing, you can get vovserver's view of licensing like this:
+ get shell as project owner with Runtime commands in PATH
% vovproject enable your-project-name
% vovsh -x 'vtk_generic_get licensepool L; parray '
This gets the license information into the Tcl array 'L' and prints it.
With RLM licensing, you can use RLM commands. Usually, you will have the environment variable RLM_LICENSE set to the port@host of your license server.
% rlmstat -avail [-c port@host]
(add -c if RLM_LICENSE is unset, or to check a different RLM license server)
% rlmstat -p slots_nc
(see who has the NC slot features checked out)
% rlmstat -a [-c port@host]
Show all RLM information available from the license server.
Note: The initial RLM implementation included features whose names begin with 'cpu_', and those features were checked out directly from RLM by vovslave. This proved to not scale as well as having vovserver check out the features, and was discontinued.