TOSCA's Floating License Management

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(I apologize if you find the quality of the images not very promising, but you can click on any image to see its enlarged view and I hope that will serve the purpose.)

In previous post I discussed about Node Locked License of TOSCA, here in this post I would now be discussing about Floating License type of TOSCA.

Floating License:- When it comes to organizations, they desire everything to be managed centrally so that users/clients don't have to worry about all the technical management related issues and they can work easily with the framework.

This has been made possible by Tricentis. Tricentis Testsuite allows you to deploy your TOSCA License on a server and then you can request for a license from this server as a client workstation.

As the name specifies, floating licenses are not locked to any workstation and enables the multi-user environment setup.

Tricentis provides Sentinel RMS License Manager along with Tosca Testsuite which is a Microsoft Windows Service that makes all Floating Licenses available to the client machines whenever they are requested dynamically.

Let's talk a bit about Sentinel RMS License Manager - It enforces and manages licensing in multi-user environment. It keeps track of all the licenses and handles requests from network users who want to run application that demand licenses, granting authorization to the requesters to allow them to run the application, and denying requests when all licenses are in use. If you want to have detailed information about Sentinel RMS License Manager, please visit Sentinel RMS License Manager link.

Below is a screenshot of the steps to license applications using the Sentinel RMS:

In the case of network licenses like Tricentis's Floating Licenses for Tosca, the license management functions are moved outside of the licensed application to an external License Manager, known as the Sentinel RMS License Manager (License Manager). The clients will have the licensed application (Tosca) installed on their systems, whereas the license file will reside on the License Manager host.

Once you have installed the License Manager on server, it automatically gets started or you can start/stop the service from Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services -> Sentinel RMS License Manager.

That was the server part, let's now see how the client machines are configured for using the Floating License.

Requesting licenses:- You can follow the following steps to configure a floating type license on your workstation.

Step I:- Open Tosca License Manager by following the path Start -> All Programs -> Tricentis -> Tosca Testsuite -> License -> Tosca License Manager. It will open like as shown.

Step II:- Click on Extras -> Options, Option dialog box will open up. Select Floating License as the License Mode from the drop down box. You need to enter the IP address of the machine where Sentinel RMS License Manager is installed (If the License Manager is installed on the same machine where we are going to use Tosca or the License Manager is in the same network, we can instead use machine name to talk to the License Server).

In the Timeout Interval (s) field you can explicitly mention the maximum wait time in seconds that your workstation should wait for accessing the server before killing the request. The default value for this is 10 seconds.

The Broadcast Timeout (s) specifies the maximum time in seconds that your workstation must wait before attempting another attempt to identify the server. The default for this is also 10 seconds.

You can press OK after you have filled all the values.

Step III:- For generating request for Floating Type License for Tosca, choose File from Tosca License Manager and then choose Request License option. This action will open a Request Floating License dialog box with the Server Locking Code.

Step IV:- You need to save the Server Locking Code by clicking on File option of Request Floating License dialog and then selecting Save as. It will save it as a .lservrc file, which you need to send to Tricentis at license@tricentis.com for requesting your floating license.

Step V:- You will receive a Server License Code file from Tricentis in the form of .lservrc file again and you need to save that file at location %TRICENTIS_HOME%\License.

Step VI:-Repeat steps I and II.

Step VII:- Click on File Option of Tosca License Manager and choose Enter License option. This will open a File Chooser Window "Choose License File to add...", browse to the location %TRICENTIS_HOME%\License and click on Open.

Step VIII:- After this step, a summary of license which have been installed will be displayed on the left hand side pane of Tosca License Manager along with the IP address of the server on which the license is hosted on the right hand side.

Step IX:- After successful installation, exit from the Tosca License Manager by clicking on File -> Exit.

Apart from these two main types of Licenses, Tricentis provides you with 2 other types of licenses, namely, Commuter License and Cloud License. I would be discussing about these now and then would be switching to Understanding Tosca's Testing Methodology.