Rockwell Licenses - FactoryTalk Activations

[psychosunshine]

Our company has 10 licenses. We have about 10 engineers covering 2 shifts.


Lately, when I've been trying to open RSLogix 5000/Studio 5000, I've not been able to get a license.


Now 4 of our licenses are Standard, and 6 of them are Professional.


Upon launching, sometimes, I get a 7 day grace period. And, other times I get a message saying that it failed to activate, and I must Activate Now or cancel. And, it will not open the software.


So, the engineers on the opposite shift are leaving the laptops on with the software open, using a license.


How do you handle the licenses at your company? Should we tell them to close the software when they are not working, or buy more licenses? Or is there an alternate solution?

 

[VAN]

The best way to handle this I think would be to have a server and everyone remotes into the server to run rockwell products. (You can run multiple sessions and use a single license but RSLinx gets a little funny, you have to run it as a service from what I remember.)

But, everyone should really freeze/pause their vms before going home for the night/day. After awhile the activation server should free up the license. (I always recommend pausing over night, because if the host reboots it doesn't hose the vm as well.)

If you know who has the license checked out might chat to them about hogging licenses.

(Really this is a management problem.)