"Could not obtain simulation license! Error code: 1002"

[tysonibele]

We have a floating Phoenix license server, with approximately 20 simulation nodes.

When farm computers are rendering PhoenixFDFire containers, we get this error on workstations when we try to simulate:

"Could not obtain simulation license! Error code: 1002"

We can obtain GUI licenses, but cannot simulate. It seems like simulation licenses are being picked up during rendering, for some reason?

[tysonibele]

This is what the license server shows, even though only a single computer is actually running a phoenix simulation right now (on our renderfarm). As you can see, 2 workstation licenses are available but my workstation is trying to pull a render license.

It's worth noting that we recently upgraded to the latest license server and this wasn't happening before...and we can't revert because then we'll lose access to the extra worktstation/render licenses we recently purchased, that aren't compatible with the previous server.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Please note that because the licensing was originally implemented with V-Ray in mind, Simulation licenses have License Type = Render. Interface licenses are GUI licenses and there's no ambiguity there. 1 Workstation license = 1 GUI + 1 Simulation license.

To simplify things, Phoenix should not require any license for rendering - you can render Phoenix simulators, particle shaders or textures using a Phoenix trial install on a machine without a license with no problem.

In the screenshot, there seem to be 26 Simulation nodes engaged and none free, thus the error about not being able to obtain a sim license. There are 2 available GUI licenses, so you can edit a Phoenix scene on 2 machines. You can render Phoenix on any machine.

If you can confirm that there are indeed 26 machines simulating at the moment, than it's working as expected, and otherwise we have a problem we need to track down.

I need a but more info to make sure I'm doing exactly the same while trying to reproduce the issue:
- Are you using exactly License Server 5.1.2?
- How are you simulating on the farm - through Backburner or Deadline or using some other submission, and are you using the Phoenix menu to submit, or SMTD, or a custom script? Does a local simulation through 3ds Max's interface behave correctly, or does it have the same issue as well?

Thanks!

[tysonibele]

At the time that screenshot was taken, *none* of the computers on our network were simulating...they were only rendering. That is the bug I'm trying to describe. They were picking up simulation licenses without actually simulating. This problem did not occur prior to us updating to the latest license server.

We are using license server 5.1.2.

We normally simulate through deadline using the Phoenix menu to submit. Local simulations behave correctly, except in this case where they would not simulate at all due to the error message reported in this thread title, and the incorrect taking of simulation licenses by computers that are simply rendering.

A temporary workaround was to replace all of our phoenix smoke containers with vray volume grid containers...this allowed us to render using our farm and simulate on our workstations (because the farm computers were not taking phoenix licenses anymore while rendering a volume grid container). But beyond that workaround, the bug still persists.

[tysonibele]

So we restarted everything again and now things seem to be working fine. Guess it was just a fluke.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, good news! I was still trying to reproduce it with different setups but it seemed to be working as expected..

Please ping us if the issue appears again.

Cheers!