Are your licenses sitting idle? Reducing application idle time to boost performance
OpenLM capabilities
The OpenLM License management tool provides two types of capabilities:
One is for monitoring license usage and extracting license statistics’ reports.
The other is for active management of licensed applications, improving license availability and boosting application efficiency.
What is the benefit ?
License managers can act on activity level reports on different levels:
- Managers will have a solid indicator on the necessity of licenses and viability of acquisition requests. License acquisition will be based on solid information.
- License administrators will use this report to reduce idle time. The can apply an idle license retrieval policy, to boost license availability and end users’ performance.
- On the Organizational culture level, users who tend to keep licenses at bay for their disposal may be confronted with this information. This may install a more courteous license consumption practice, and improve team spirit.
The OpenLM advantage
The OpenLM Agent is a lightweight optional software component that is installed on end users’ workstations. It provides a set of capabilities that empower end users, making them less dependent on system administrators.
The OpenLM Agent may be configured to monitor activity levels of predefined processes. It will monitor the CPU percentage and I/O data access, and compare them to predefined threshold values to ascertain whether the process of interest is active or idle.
Idle time presentation
The OpenLM EasyAdmin web application will show idle time information in three different contexts:
- Individual application idle time will be presented on the “Currently consumed licenses” report. Administrators will also be able to obtain a waveform presentation of Active/Idle periods of each session, or manually end an idle session from that window.
- On the OpenLM dashboard, a view of the 10 sessions with most idle time is available.
OpenLM provides different methods to actively enhance the license usage. These methods will be discussed on the following article.
OpenLM’s License retrieval methods
It has been reported that client who have implemented such features have been able to improve their existing license utilization by as much as 25%.
OpenLM implements two idle process license harvesting methods:
- The basic method is named “Suspend and Resume”. OpenLM will detect an idle process, identify its respective license, release the license back into the common license pool, and “freeze” the application until the license is reclaimed. This method is a global one, intended for all licensed applications.
- The second method is named “Save and Close”, and is currently reserved to three specific vendors: MATLAB, ESRI ArcGIS and Autodesk. “Save and close” employs a dedicated software extension, that communicates with each of the above applications. When an idle station is identified, the user’s work will be saved, and the application will be actively shut down.
Thresholds and configurations
- The OpenLM Agent is configured to report monitored processes as idle when their CPU usage and I/O data addressing rate falls below predefined values for a given period.
- The OpenLM Server will issue a license removal to the license server either directly, or via the OpenLM Broker (if installed). It will do so when predefined conditions of total usage percentage and application idle time are met.
What happens now ?
After a license is harvested, a pop-up will appear on the user’s screen, notifying them that the license was removed. The user will be able to resume activity with a single click on the pop-up.
A list of closed sessions is also available on the OpenLM Agent. Applications can easily be resumed from there too.
In addition, users who have been denied a license will also get a pop-up message on their screen, notifying them of the new vacancy. This feature further boosts license availability.
Further information
- Please visit the OpenLM website and read more about these capabilities:
- Monitoring Idle Application time, and manual license retrieval – AN4005a
- Closing Idle Sessions and Automatic License Retrieval – AN3005
- You can choose to download the software components here.
- For additional assistance – please contact our support team:
support@openlm.com