Floating Licenses
Setting up your application to accommodate floating licenses is quite simple. Due to LicenseSpring being a cloud-centric software licensing API, there's no need to set up a license server for license issuance and revocation.
This concise guide will walk you through the process of establishing a basic floating license for your application.
While this method offers a rapid implementation of a floating/concurrent license model, it does come with certain constraints.
The primary feature of a floating license is its capacity to constrain the quantity of machines concurrently utilizing the same license.
More intricate iterations of a floating license could further confine deployment to a designated network, IP address range, or a predefined roster of machines.
An approach to concurrent licensing, offered by LicenseSpring, involves incorporating a server-side watchdog mechanism. This watchdog periodically assesses the connection status with an application that has secured a license. In cases where the application terminates abruptly, the watchdog ensures the license is released.
LicenseSpring has two types of floating licenses:
- Floating Cloud where LicenseSpring is the server that manages the checking in and out of licenses.
- Floating License Server where licenses are issued for servers that run on-premise, and the client devices do not require an internet connection to request / release licenses from the server.
A highly effective approach for extending the duration of a license beyond the default floating timeout involves license borrowing.
With standard floating licenses, adherence to the floating timeout period is required for license validation or renewal. However, license borrowing introduces a solution wherein a license can be generated to appear as "utilized" on the floating server.
This empowers the designated user to employ the license offline throughout the borrowing period, which can be significantly extended compared to the license's typical floating timeout. This functionality proves particularly advantageous for scenarios involving offline floating licensing.
For instance, consider a scenario where an employee must engage with a project necessitating a floating license while working remotely. Due to security constraints, accessing the license server isn't feasible. By borrowing a license for, let's say, 24 hours, the employee gains the ability to utilize the license without requiring a connection to the server during that entire 24-hour timeframe.
For information on how to setup license borrowing, see our Floating Licensing tutorial.
