[Bioclusters] Advice:Several Linux Clusters and FLEXLM

[Steve]

2 cents on flexlm servers.
We are moving our flexlm servers to a single virtual system. If you have 
had the hastle of transfering multiple flexlm licenses to another server 
because of a NIC card or system dying, you will know why.

Using VMWARE ESX (you may be able to do the same with GSX or WS, but we 
are using ESX in other areas), you can assign a MAC address to the 
virutal NIC-use this MAC address for all your flexlm licenses. If the 
first system dies, you just "fire-up" a clone of the virtual system, MAC 
address and all.
If you want get real fancy, stick the ESX image file on a SAN fie system 
and have a second physical box standing by to launch the virtual server 
automatically (Veritas clustering combined with VMOTION).

You could also edit the MAC address on the liniux system if the NIC 
driver allows it, and not have to use VMWARE at all?

Steve

Joe Landman wrote:

> yes ...
>
> Daniel.G.Roberts@aventis.com wrote:
>
>> Hello All
>> Anyone have any experience using FlexLM servers with several 
>> different linux clusters?
>> In essence, I have three separate linux clusters which need to 
>> communicate with a flexlm server.
>> I can find several examples of one cluster communicating with a 
>> flexlm server, but what about more than one cluster?
>> Thanks for any direction!
>
>
>
> Not too painful, simply designate a single (visibly to all cluster 
> compute nodes) resource to be your license server.  If needed, you can 
> multihome this system, or set up NAT on the head nodes to allow the 
> compute nodes in all systems to see it.
>
> I have set up a few of these for customers before, it is usually not 
> difficult, even with integration with a scheduler.
>
>> Sincerely
>> Dan
>
>
>