My fundamental misunderstanding of online licensing

[davision]

Okay, so I think I completely misunderstand online licensing and I'd love it if someone explained it to me. I have been a long-time user of Vray and have had dongles (3 actually) that I've been using over the past many years to authorize different sets of computers in different locations.

So this was my understanding of the dongle system: (I'm pretty sure I have this part correct) you would choose a computer to serve as a license server. The dongle would be plugged into this computer and would tell it how many workstation licenses and render licenses were available in total. Any workstations or render servers would then contact this License server computer (as identified in the Vray Client License Settings as configured on each individual computer) and the license server computer would distribute the licenses. Okay, so far so good.

I thought the online licensing system was going to take the license server computer out of the equation. So instead of running the license server on a local computer, there would be no user-owned license server needed at all. I thought each workstation or render machine would just log into Chaos Group's central hub under your user account and Chaos would know how many workstation and render licenses were available, and it would distribute them to the client computers. In other words, this would work similar to Adobe Creative Cloud or other online authorization systems (like Bones Pro or even iTunes). Whenever you set up Creative Cloud (or iTunes) on a new computer you log into your Adobe account. It checks to see if you have any seats available and if you do, you are activated... if none are available you can choose to deactivate one of the other computers. This is what I thought Chaos was doing and it seemed like a great idea.

Now I'm getting the impression, that this is incorrect. It seems like the only difference now is that the user-owned license server computer will not require a dongle to know how many workstation seats or render seats are available -- instead it will get that information directly by logging into Chaos Group. However all the client machines will still need to connect to this user-owned license server computer just as they had done in the past. Is this right? It doesn't seem like a major change or advancement, if so.

I have more questions, but I need to get this big one out of the way first.

Thank you.

[stefan.isakov]

Thank you for your questions.
At the moment V-Ray licensing is dongle based and online based. The latest version of V-Ray license server 4.5.1 is able to work with both dongles and online based licenses. Through the web page "localhost:30304" you can activate both your dongle and sign in with your username which is tied to the online based V-Ray license. If you have only a dongle and no online based license, you will need to install V-Ray license server on the machine where dongle resides(and wibu drivers) and you will be able to use the license which resides on this dongle. Online licensing will not have any role in this situation, because your licenses resides on the USB dongle device. If you have only online based licenses of V-Ray, then you can install V-Ray license server on any machine connected to internet and sign in with your username tied to your V-Ray license in order to activate the license for your current machine. If you want you can still install V-Ray license server only on one central server and pull the V-Ray license through the local network from the other machine as you did before.
Let me know if you understand how V-Ray dongle based and online based licensing works and if you have any questions.

[ivan.slavchev]

Now I'm getting the impression, that this is incorrect. It seems like the only difference now is that the user-owned license server computer will not require a dongle to know how many workstation seats or render seats are available -- instead it will get that information directly by logging into Chaos Group. However all the client machines will still need to connect to this user-owned license server computer just as they had done in the past. Is this right? It doesn't seem like a major change or advancement, if so.

"Online licensing" in CG context means that you get the licenses over the Internet from our backend license server, instead of a hardware dongle. The way the licenses are redistributed is the same as before - V-Ray addresses the license server and request a license.

With Online licensing you can install a license server on every computer and log in with the same credentials and you won't need a centralized license server. However - while this might be an adequate setup if you have a couple of licenses - it's certainly not a good option if you have a bigger amount of licenses. 1st - you loose the ability to monitor license usage from a centralized location and 2nd - the network overhead that you'd get using large amount of license server instances is significantly higher because each computer will communicate with the backend instead of only the license server machine.

Example scenarios and details about the license server setup are available here - https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...License+Server

[davision]

Okay thank you very much. Maybe I didn?t misunderstand as badly as I thought and this new system sounds great.

right now I have a remote employee who accesses his license through a dongle plugged in at my office (from a port forwarded computer that is always left running ). I could convert that dongle to an online license and then I would just have him install the license server on his computer and it would log in to the main user account to get the license. Correct?

i have two other dongles being used for license servers in the office as well. I could leave these servers running as dongle based even if I convert the third one (for the remote employee) to an online license. Correct? In other words, I don?t have to convert all my dongles to online for this to work.... I can do it both ways right?

[ivan.slavchev]

Right now I have a remote employee who accesses his license through a dongle plugged in at my office (from a port forwarded computer that is always left running ). I could convert that dongle to an online license and then I would just have him install the license server on his computer and it would log in to the main user account to get the license. Correct?

Yes, that's correct.

I have two other dongles being used for license servers in the office as well. I could leave these servers running as dongle based even if I convert the third one (for the remote employee) to an online license. Correct? In other words, I don?t have to convert all my dongles to online for this to work.... I can do it both ways right?

Yes, you can leave some licenses on dongles and convert only 1 (or more) dongle to Online.

[francomanko]

Hi, so i followed the instructions for transferring the dongle to online, upgraded to the correct license server version etc (this is vray for maya)..but when i goto the localhost page and look at the dongle section, there's no transfer option.

The dongle section does have an update option, do i need to do this before i meet the criteria for transfer, or is there something else?

[ivan.slavchev]

Hi, so i followed the instructions for transferring the dongle to online, upgraded to the correct license server version etc (this is vray for maya)..but when i goto the localhost page and look at the dongle section, there's no transfer option.

The dongle section does have an update option, do i need to do this before i meet the criteria for transfer, or is there something else?

You should be able to migrate now.