flexLM Metrics

SystemAdmin - Fri Jan 15 11:01:46 EST 2010
Louie,

Yes, for over 3 years now, I have done many manual snapshots using lmutils for each of our flexLM license servers. For example, I do 4 daily snapshots at key hours and then record into spreadsheet format and generate charts to monitor license use periodically during the weeks, months, yearly to keep tabs on license use, which helps us make confident choices on numbers of licenses, especially the expensive tools similar to DOORS seats. We don't want to have excessive extra licenses(wasted $), and at the same time we don't wish to run short either(poor productivity$).

In addition, at our company, in several business units that I work with, we have implemented the FlexNET Manager tool which has all kinds of powerful reporting abilities. ie. continuos reporting vs. snapshots is much more accurate, especially at peak use periods.
We have not been allowed to include our own numerous FlexLM license servers onto the FlexNET Manager database prior to now due to security limitations, but we are moving towards implementing FlexNET Manager in 2010 on all of our systems.
It, FlexNET Manager, is a VERY capable tool that will change your IT team approach to managing license support, however, the vendor for it has changed hands approx. 3 times in the last 4 years, which has created some anxiety among the IT associates I interface with. Once you decide to implement FlexNET Manager you MUST process ALL flexLM licenses thru FlexNET Manager Admin interface, or it will not work correctly.

gsdguy
In addition, they keep changing the license model for using FlexNET Manager.

kbmurphy - Thu Jan 14 16:52:16 EST 2010
Louie,

Not sure whether this answers your questions, but I do have a process setup for a client of mine where I use MRTG to connect to the flexlm server and it graphs the stats automatically.

This is a potential article on my Web site one day, so I won't post details right now. But if you have any questions, please send me an email and I'll give you the gist of what I've done.

Kevin

SystemAdmin - Thu Feb 11 07:56:05 EST 2010
I am very interested, but I do not know how to send you an email via this forum, I've tried, but I've failed.
If you can see my email, I would be very grateful, otherwise I shall post it on this forum, I have no qualms about it.

SystemAdmin - Thu Feb 11 07:56:05 EST 2010
I am very interested, but I do not know how to send you an email via this forum, I've tried, but I've failed.
If you can see my email, I would be very grateful, otherwise I shall post it on this forum, I have no qualms about it.

llandale - Tue Feb 16 16:18:49 EST 2010
Well, we found the 'debug' license.log file that has times when licenses are checked-out and checked-in, for whom-where-what-howmany. Parsing that is surely easier than dumping lmutil stats every minute, and parsing that.

Still looking into it.

• Louie

kbmurphy - Tue Feb 16 20:14:49 EST 2010
Louie,

I looked at the license.log file today and it doesn't appear to have dates in it--just times. This impedes its use.

Have you seen the same thing?

llandale - Tue Feb 16 16:18:49 EST 2010
Well, we found the 'debug' license.log file that has times when licenses are checked-out and checked-in, for whom-where-what-howmany. Parsing that is surely easier than dumping lmutil stats every minute, and parsing that.

Still looking into it.

• Louie

SystemAdmin - Wed Feb 17 18:47:58 EST 2010
Louie wrote "Parsing that is surely easier than dumping lmutil stats every minute, and parsing that."

Have been down that path of trying to parse the FlexLm log file and found that there were too many exceptions in the way that FlexLm add's information to it's log. For example, you have to correlate check-out's with check-in's and make sure that you can distinguish between denied check-outs and allowed check-outs, you have to distinguish multiple check-ins even though a user has only checked-out once, and so on. Something else to contend with is that everytime the FlexLm service is restarted, the log is flushed (Usually done when a new license file is uploaded).

We didn't dump lmutil stats every minute but chose a 30 minute sampling period as being quite adequate to give us meaningful daily stats. The lmutil stats were dumped into a text file and recorded in weekly chunks, a PERL script was written to parse these stat files and deliver a report for that week of stats. If you want to get sophisticated, the PERL script could have been designd to write the summary info directly into MSExcel or a MySQL DB where reporting tools like Excels built-in charting tools and Crystal Reports can be used to generate charts.

SystemAdmin - Mon Feb 22 02:56:56 EST 2010
Well, at least if you have a Flexlm license server on Unix, you can avoid the flushing, by starting the license and telling lmgrd to append the log to the existing one, via the ">>". Usual stuff, but useful.
Not sure about Windows, though.

kbmurphy - Thu Jan 14 16:52:16 EST 2010
Louie,

Not sure whether this answers your questions, but I do have a process setup for a client of mine where I use MRTG to connect to the flexlm server and it graphs the stats automatically.

This is a potential article on my Web site one day, so I won't post details right now. But if you have any questions, please send me an email and I'll give you the gist of what I've done.

Kevin

EugeneZ - Thu Mar 25 13:10:50 EDT 2010
Kevin,

I am trying to get stats from our FlexLM server on AUTO CAD type licenses.
Simple graph showing NumberOfLicensesUsed(time) for each license type would be enough for my purposes.

I see two ways to do it:

1. Regularly query license manager and parse output to a 4-column table
LicenseType – Date – Time - UsedLicenses
Found way to query current license in use from command prompt for all features or specific feature:

lmutil lmstat -a -c "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager\License"
lmutil lmstat -a -c "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager\License" -f 64900CIV3D_F
If you already have the way to parse output I would appreciate if you can share.

Only drawback for this method is that data pulled in discreet times and it is unknown what happens in between.
Second way is to parse log file. I am not sure if you are doing this. Another problem here is that file gets recreated every few weeks at random times.

Thanks,
Eugene

EugeneZ - Thu Mar 25 13:10:50 EDT 2010
Kevin,

I am trying to get stats from our FlexLM server on AUTO CAD type licenses.
Simple graph showing NumberOfLicensesUsed(time) for each license type would be enough for my purposes.

I see two ways to do it:

1. Regularly query license manager and parse output to a 4-column table
LicenseType – Date – Time - UsedLicenses
Found way to query current license in use from command prompt for all features or specific feature:

lmutil lmstat -a -c "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager\License"
lmutil lmstat -a -c "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager\License" -f 64900CIV3D_F
If you already have the way to parse output I would appreciate if you can share.

Only drawback for this method is that data pulled in discreet times and it is unknown what happens in between.
Second way is to parse log file. I am not sure if you are doing this. Another problem here is that file gets recreated every few weeks at random times.

Thanks,
Eugene

SystemAdmin - Mon Feb 22 05:57:22 EST 2010
I've never used FlexLM on a Solaris platform but it wouldn't surprise me that it's a whole lot more stable than it's Windows cousin. Not sure if they have fixed this particular problem yet, but up to at least version 11.x of FlexLM on Windows, it would occassionally duplicate one or more vendor license daemon processes when using the "Reread License File" option on the LMTools utility. It was safer to stop and restart the FlexLM service when wanting to upload a modified license file.

kbmurphy - Thu Jan 14 16:52:16 EST 2010
Louie,

Not sure whether this answers your questions, but I do have a process setup for a client of mine where I use MRTG to connect to the flexlm server and it graphs the stats automatically.

This is a potential article on my Web site one day, so I won't post details right now. But if you have any questions, please send me an email and I'll give you the gist of what I've done.

Kevin

PDU - Mon Mar 29 03:39:50 EDT 2010
Hi,

i use since one year a free tool : FlexLM License Monitor.
You can find it here :
http://www.malfaire.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&op=getit&lid=1

This tool create log files :

• Single User Logs
• Single License Logs
• Compiled User
• Compiled License