Multiple overlapping licenses for the same feature with different time period

[RangaPro]

Hello,

We are planning to use short term licenses with fixed validity period and which provides a certain count of seats. Now our customer's might choose to buy additional seats after they have been using the original license for a few months.

I see that for a given feature, flexera is simply overwriting/not considering the earlier license and only the latest license information is seen, for example in LMTools. Also using increment is not an option because the earlier license will have an earlier expiry date than the newer one. 

Is it possible to have flexera expose both the license information via code.

example:

License 1:

SERVER this_host ANY
VENDOR TEST
USE_SERVER
FEATURE MyFeature1 TEST 1 31-dec-2020 1000 ISSUED=1-dec-2019 SIGN="0"

License 2:

SERVER this_host ANY
VENDOR TEST
USE_SERVER
FEATURE MyFeature1 TEST 1 31-may-2021 5000 ISSUED=1-jun-2020 SIGN="0"

So expectation is that during 1 Jun 2020 to 31 Dec 2020 both license should  be exposed by flexera and in other periods only the valid licenses should be exposed. Is it possible ?

[raffie]

I think you really want to use INCREMENT lines here instead of FEATURE lines.  With FEATURE lines you can only have one, and then you can add INCREMENT lines to it.  Instead just always use INCREMENT lines.  Then your customer can have:

SERVER this_host ANY
VENDOR TEST
USE_SERVER
INCREMENT MyFeature1 TEST 1 31-dec-2020 1000 ISSUED=1-dec-2019 SIGN="0"
INCREMENT MyFeature1 TEST 1 31-may-2021 5000 ISSUED=1-jun-2020 SIGN="0"

This will give the customer 6000 keys, and 1000 will expire in December, and 5000 in May.

Be aware of license pooling.  If you do this and query  the data it might look like they all expire at the same time but they really won't.

Alternatively, if you really want to use FEATURE lines, you can look into SUPERSEDE lines, but they can be difficult to use.

[RangaPro]

Thanks ! I will try experimenting with INCREMENT lines.

And from what you say , there is no way to gather to gather the individual license data, correct ?

[raffie]

If you prevent pooling, then you can get the data for the line that was used to fulfill the checkout.

There is a section on pooling in the doc for FEATURE and INCREMENT lines.  Also look at the doc for ls_compare_vendor_on_increment.

[aparashar1]

Would you kindly elaborate on what do you mean by "gathering the individual license data"? Do you mean to figure out how many INCREMENT lines are there and details about them OR something else?

[RangaPro]

@raffie  Thanks for the information! I will try it out !

@aparashar1 Yes, something like that. The idea is to be able to fetch the details of each individual license (even though they belong to the same feature) installed by user and show it's corresponding information.

Example:

License #1

Valid From : xxx

Valid Until : xxx

Days Remaining : xxx

Seat Count : xxx

License #2

Valid From : xxx

Valid Until : xxx

Days Remaining : xxx

Seat Count : xxx

Also the we would to remind the user when the individual licenses are nearing their expiry date.

Currently I am observing (like raffie) mentioned, the last uploaded license date is returned for the valid until field irrespective of if it's expiring earlier or later than earlier uploaded license. So having individual details of each license will help us show it in the application UI individually.

I am planning to look at the license pooling that raffie had mentioned about.

Thanks for your time !