VMware & Rockwell Software

Hi new to this blog and need some advise as Rockwell have not been helpful.....

New laptop with Win 7 Pro 64bit with both wired and wireless network connections.

Installed 2 virtual operating systems, Win XP and Win 7 in VMWare.

Both virtual operating systems have RSLogix5000 installed and FT Activation Manager.

We have more engineers who use the Rockwell software than licenses. All licenses are stored on a server. When an engineer needs one he borrows the license for a time then returns to the server when finished.

The VMWare operating system lists in its FT Activation Manager all the available licenses on the server so at least I know the virtual operating system is talking to the network and sees the server. However, when you open RSLogix5000 is has finished its grace period and wants to activate to the FT Activation Manager. You click activate and it opens the FT Activation Manager and does not activate. You can see in the list of available licenses RSLogix5000 Professional and that there is a license available.

This is happening on both virtual operating systems on this laptop. I have installed RSLogix5000 V20 and the activation manager on the host and that works OK.

I have downloaded an entire Rockwell Enterprise toolkit license to the virtual machines operating system via Activation Manager and it still gives an error.
The RSsvr.log file does have these errors:

flexsvr) UNSUPPORTED: "RS5000.exe" (PORT_AT_HOST_PLUS ) Administrator@universa-952dbe (License server system does not support this feature. (-18,327:10054 ""))
11:35:56 (flexsvr) UNSUPPORTED: "rsi.master" (PORT_AT_HOST_PLUS ) Administrator@universa-952dbe (License server system does not support this feature. (-18,327:10054 ""))

Any thoughts?

Not something as simple as the network connections confusing it? Try using a bridged connection with separate IP addresses rather than NAT.

What you are doing should be no problem. make sure you are using a bridged connection in the VM and not NAT.

Check your security software in your VM's make sure it's not Anti Virus software or the windows firewall causing the issue.

Try disabling any security software and the windows firewall for a test.

Welcome to the Forum ! We appreciate inaugural posts that give good detailed information.

I think the clue is the presence of a 'master.rsi' request in conjunction with the error phrase about 'license system does not support this feature'.

Check the Activation directory to see if there are some expired *.LIC files from old toolkits. The expiration data will be shown in the file name; you can safely move them out of the activation directory.

What happens, I think, is that RSLogix 5000 puts in a request for activation, the Activation Manager grabs the first license it finds, then it all ends in tears when the license is expired.

This suggestion comes from the RA Knowledgebase, Article 471099. All I used was the error code as a search term.

I run a very similar activation architecture with VMs, but my activation server is right there on my host OS. I use an additional 'host only' dedicated virtual NIC with VMWare and it works great.