What is the difference between Samples Data and Logs Data in a History Details Report? (LicenseMonitor)

System Administrator
System Administrator
Altair Employee
edited February 2023 in Altair HPCWorks

When generating a report with LicenseMonitor, you can choose from two types of data: samples data or logs data. Samples data is the most exact data, and therefore, it is the default setting. Use logs data only under certain circumstances.

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Figure: Data Origin

Samples Data (Preferred)

Samples data is derived from running lmstat, rlmstat or the equivalent command for other licensing systems, against the live license server to obtain the current checkouts. This enables you to retrieve denials data as well.

Logs Data (Use Only Under Certain Conditions)

Logs data comes from parsing the debug log files from the license server. Unlike the samples data, logs data is inexact. It retrieves 1m resolution data and does not retrieve the PIDs, so it is impossible to match the OUT and IN lines to get correct checkout duration.

Only use the checkouts from logs data to get a general utilization number for time intervals when samples data is unavailable (e.g., before LM is started).

Note: You will only have checkout data in the logs database if you have configured that tag to extract checkouts from the log files.