Configuring FlexNet Licensing

Prerequisites: FlexNet license servers have been set up in your company's environment or in Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure. To ensure that your license servers are accessible, see Requirements for FlexNet License Servers at the end of this document. To configure licensing, must have a tenant administrator role.

FlexNet Licensing enables multiple users to simultaneously share a pool of traditional leased or purchased floating product licenses that are hosted on a server on your company's premises or on a virtual machine in Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure. Licenses are administered using the FlexNet license manager. For more information, refer to the Ansys, Inc. Licensing documentation on the Licensing page of the Ansys Help site.

Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure supports the use of multiple FlexNet license servers across regions. Once you have configured a pool of license servers, you can assign specific license servers to each region in your tenant.

To configure FlexNet Licensing:

  1. On the Administration > License Settings page, locate FlexNet licensing and click Configure.
  2. On the FlexNet licensing page, configure a pool of FlexNet license servers within your tenant.

    To add a license server to the list:

    1. Click Add FlexNet license server.
    2. Specify the IP address of the FlexNet license server and the port number used for the FlexNet component of the license manager (the port on which the License Manager listens for requests). The default port used for FlexNet is 1055.
    3. If using this license server to provide licensing for the LS-DYNA application, and the LSTC License Manager is hosted on this server, enable Use as an LSTC server.

      For information about LS-DYNA licensing, refer to the Download/Install Overview page of the Ansys LS-DYNA website.

      Note: If this setting is enabled, the license server can only be used for LSTC licensing.
    4. Click Save.

    Once you have specified all the license servers that you want to use, you can proceed with the next step of assigning license servers to regions.

  3. Assign one or more license servers to each region in your tenant.

    1. For a listed region, click Assign license server and then select the desired license server from the list.

    2. Repeat the above step for every license server that you want to assign to the region.

    3. If you have assigned more than one license server to the region, use the arrows in the Priority column to arrange the license servers in the order that you want them to be used.

Requirements for FlexNet License Servers

  • If you want to use an on-premises license server that is protected by a firewall, an IT administrator must open ports to allow communication between clients and the license server.

  • If your license server is on a machine in your local network, there must be a secure and private connection between your local network and the Virtual Network (VNet).  Azure recommends site-to-site VPN or point-to-site VPN.  See Microsoft Azure's VPN Gateway documentation.

  • If Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure is not integrated with Active Directory (that is, Express setup was used), and your license server is on a virtual machine in Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure, Ansys License Manager should be configured to use the private IP address.