Network floating licenses

A network floating license allows a fixed number of machines or users to run the product at the same time, without restricting which host the software can run on. Floating licenses are cluster-wide resources rather than belonging to a specific host.

LSF can be used to manage floating licenses using the following LSF features:

  • Shared resources

  • Resource reservation

  • Job requeuing

Using LSF to run licensed software the licenses can be kept in use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. For expensive licenses, this increases their value to the users and increases productivity because users do not have to wait for a license to become available.

LSF jobs can make use of floating licenses when:

  • All license jobs are run through LSF

  • Licenses are managed outside of LSF control

All licenses used through Platform LSF

If all jobs requiring licenses are submitted through LSF, then LSF could regulate the allocation of licenses to jobs and ensure that a job is not started if the required license is not available. A static resource is used to hold the total number of licenses that are available. The static resource is used by LSF as a counter which is decremented by the resource reservation mechanism each time a job requiring that resource is started.