Specifications

Performance Notes
18
Chapter 2 - Configuring the License Server
Performance Notes
High performance is always a consideration on a busy network. There are sev-
eral things you can do to optimize the speed with which licenses are acquired by
your network users, and to speed up the use of SentinelLM utilities:
• The computers on which license servers run should use static IP
addresses rather than dynamically allocated IP addresses (DHCP). In
fact, redundant license server computers must use static IP addresses.
• Client computers should be set up to directly contact the license server
that services the licenses used by that client. The LSHOST and
LSFORCEHOST environment variables or the lshost file can be used to
do this.
• Client computers should contain a hosts file that maps IP or IPX
addresses to the host names of the computers on which license servers
reside; this speeds up contacting those license servers. The location of
this file depends on your operating system. For Windows 95/98, this file
is probably located in \Windows; for Windows NT/2000, this file is prob-
ably located in \System32\Drivers\Etc. The file itself contains instruc-
tions on entry format.
• Better performance can be achieved by running license servers on Win-
dows NT/2000 rather than Windows 95/98.
License Authorization Process
The next sections give a step-by-step description of the entire license authoriza-
tion process.
Step 1: License Server Configuration
When the license server is started it is configured in three stages. First, any
options selected by command line parameters are set. Next, any options for