Allen bradley licensing question

I'm about to install Studio 5000 and its license on one of our main servers. However, I will often need to travel off site and use the software on my laptop.

Because the software is so expensive, I only want to purchase one license. Could somebody walk me through the procedure of moving the license from the server to my laptop, and then back from my laptop to the server when complete?

Well you will first have to add an activation server to the Activation Manager on your laptop. They should then show up under "Find Available Activation". After that you can use "Borrow Activations" and "Return Activations" to move them temporarily to your machine and back to the server.

dmroeder's advice is spot on. Just to expand on it slightly - if you install the license on the server, you can connect your laptop to the server and "borrow" the license for a set time period. That means that your laptop now has a license with or without the server for the specified time, and the server will no longer issue that license for the same amount of time. When that time expires, whether or not your laptop has connected to the server (or the internet) again, your laptop will go back to having no license, and the server will again be able to issue the license.

You can also connect your laptop to the server and "return" the license early, if you wish.

A dongle is another option if you're moving it frequently and don't want to have to go through the process of borrowing each time. If you were moving the license around every few days, a dongle is much easier - just grab it on your way out the door and it goes where you go. But if it's just a case of wanting to take the license with you next month when you're onsite for a week, borrowing is probably fine - saves you the cost of a dongle, and it's harder to lose.

I haven't yet gotten to play with the software, so I wasn't aware of the borrowing feature.

It's common for me to be on site for 45 days at a time. In the chance that I'm at a location without internet, would this option still work for me?

I'll be the only tech in the office that will be using the software, so borrowing the license for an extended time isn't a problem.

I don't like the idea of using a USB dongle just because of how easy it would be to lose during travel.

What time periods are you allowed to reassign a license for?

ABnewb said:

I'll be the only tech in the office that will be using the software, so borrowing the license for an extended time isn't a problem.

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So why bother with an actual server to host the license if you're the only one who will use it? Just install the license on your laptop and be done with it.

Do you still have to call Rockwell every fifth or sixth borrow to have your system rest.?????

I had to do that before we invested in the dongle.

RS500, FTV, and RS 5000.

ABnewb said:

I don't like the idea of using a USB dongle just because of how easy it would be to lose during travel./QUOTE]

A dongle is like your wallet. Never out of your control. That's 10K in licensing

"It's ten o'Clock.......do you know where your dongle is"

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John Morris said:

Do you still have to call Rockwell every fifth or sixth borrow to have your system rest.?????

I had to do that before we invested in the dongle.

RS500, FTV, and RS 5000.

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You do not need to call them no. I borrow licenses all the time for use out on the plant floor w/out network.

Paully's5.0 said:

So why bother with an actual server to host the license if you're the only one who will use it? Just install the license on your laptop and be done with it.

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Potentially for disaster recovery? If you fill up your laptop with curry while out onsite (not that I've ever done that, of course ) then while you have plenty of other headaches to deal with already, at least licensing isn't one of them!

I'm not sure of the maximum borrow time for a license - but I did find something with a quick google search that says "A customer’s software administrator can further restrict the maximum borrow time to <90 days", so that would probably hint toward 45 days being fine.

As for having to call RA after the 6th time - that applies to rehosting not borrowing a license. Rehosting is actually moving the license from one PC to another - which, correct, you cannot do endlessly. That's not what the licenses are for. Borrowing? Do it as often as you want. That's what it's intended for.

Yeah, 90 is the hard limit.

I like the server based license scheme. I am often away from the office where our license server resides. Often, the 7 day grace period keeps me out of trouble since I am rarely away from the office for more than a week. I also have a VPN connection to the server in case I need to borrow a license from a hotel room miles away.

With the VPN connection it can still be a little bit tricky to get FTAM to "see" the licenses on the server at the other end of the connection. I often have to"refresh activations" four or five times to get it to work, but it only costs me a couple of minutes time.

Borrowing the license is not the same as rehosting and the number of borrows is not limited. Borrowing is what you want to do if you know you will be away from the server. You borrow it while connected to the server and set the time limit. If your laptop with the borrowed license meets with unfortunate demise, no worries, the license will magically reappear as available on the server when the borrow term expires.

I can easily lose a dongle or a thumb drive of any type. I can't lose a server based license quite so easily. I could easily lose or destroy a laptop too, so I prefer the server based scheme along with the small hassle of borrowing. We don't have to own as many licenses of each software type this way since it is rare for more than one of us to be using any particular software at any given instant in time.

ASF said:

Potentially for disaster recovery?

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If you have a disaster call Rockwell. Borrowing licensing for a single user who travels constantly doesn't seem at all practical.

FYI, you can backup the .LIC file, save it somewhere. Get yourself a USB-Ethernet dongle and apply the license to that. Now you have a useful dongle and disaster mitigation without any hassle.

EDIT: If you use VMs it's even easier to recover.

Paully's5.0 said:

EDIT: If you use VMs it's even easier to recover.

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Yeah, that's my curry induced, erm I mean, theoretical, disaster recovery philosophy. But each to his own!