Controlling Network License Access Using an Options File

Versions	All versions
Products	All products
Released	12 March 2019

Summary

Access to licenses and specifc license features can be controlled using an options file setup at the license server. This method of license control is most appropriate when licenses are being shared amongst multiple groups within an organistion. If you wish to share license features amongst co-workers in the same office, it may be more appropriate to use the short-cut method of license control. See Controlling License Features Using a Program Shortcut for further details.

Setting up a Flex Options file

To setup the license server to reserve SIMetrix or SIMPLIS licenses for one user or a group of users, you need to create a flexlm options file. You can use the RESERVE feature to reserve certain license features for specific users. If your requirement is to restrict all access to the license then you only need to control the feature called basic. The procedure is described in the following sections. The procedure described here uses Windows as an example but the procedures are the same for Linux systems except where noted.

Procedure

1. Creating the Options File
2. Editing the License File
3. Restart the License Server

Creating the Options File

To Reserve All Features for Specific Users

Here we create an options file that restricts access for all licenses. That is all users who have access to SIMetrix can access any version, but some users can't access it at all.

RESERVE 1 basic USER tom
RESERVE 1 basic USER bill

Replace "tom" with the actual user name - that is the name the user logs in with. The above will reserve SIMetrix licenses for tom and bill.

If there are many users, this is more easily implemented using a group:

GROUP simetrix bill tony fred
RESERVE 1 basic GROUP simetrix

Reserve Certain Features

If you have a mixed feature license and wish to allow only certain users access to the higher value products, then you can restrict the features particular to that product. For example, if you have some licenses of SIMetrix Classic and also some SIMetrix Pro licenses, then you can restrict the va and vl features to allow only certain users access to SIMetrix Pro.

To determine which features to reserve, see the following table. This shows what license features each product uses:

SIMetrix Classic	basic, digital, advanced
SIMetrix Pro	basic, digital, advanced, va, vl
SIMetrix Elite	basic, digital, advanced, va, vl, micron, rtn
SIMetrix/SIMPLIS	basic, digital, advanced, simplis_if
SIMetrix/SIMPLIS Pro	basic, digital, advanced, va, vl, simplis_if, mcsp1
SIMetrix/SIMPLIS Elite	basic, digital, advanced, va, vl, micron, rtn, simplis_if, mcsp1, mcsp2

For example, to limit the SIMetrix Pro product to one user called "tom" add this:

RESERVE 1 va USER tom
RESERVE 1 vl USER tom

va and vl are the feature supplied only with Pro and Elite products and enable Verilog-A and Verilog-HDL respectively.

To restrict usage of the DVM feature, see section below Notes for SIMPLIS and DVM

Editing the License File

You must make a small change to the license file to tell it to use the options file that you created.

Add "options=options-file-path" at the end of the "VENDOR NEWTECH" line in the license file. E.g.:

VENDOR NEWTECH options="C:\Program Files\SIMetrix-SIMPLIS-LM\options.txt"

You can do this yourself - the license will not be invalidated by this addition. We suggest using a full path name for the options file.

Restart the License Server

Once you have created the options file and edited the license file, you must restart the license server. In Windows this is best done using through the Control Panel Services icon. This is usually under "Administrative Tools". For Linux restart the license daemon lmgrd.

Notes for SIMPLIS and DVM

The same settings can be used to reserve SIMPLIS Technologies features such as the SIMPLIS simulator and DVM. For these you need to a separate options file specified on the pdt vendor daemon line:

VENDOR pdt options="C:\Program Files\SIMetrix SIMPLIS LM\simplis_options.txt"

To reserve the DVM system use something like

RESERVE 1 dvm_if USER tom
RESERVE 1 dvm_standard USER tom
RESERVE 1 dvm_advanced USER tom

SIMPLIS features can be controlled using the simplis_if feature in the SIMetrix options file. This will prevent SIMPLIS from being run from within the SIMetrix GUI which in practice also prevents SIMPLIS from being used altogether. This is sufficient for restricting access to SIMPLIS and it isn't usually necessary to set up a separate options file for the pdt daemon.