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VLA, serial numbers, and activation: how do they work?

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Our group recently purchased a VLA of LabVIEW so we could upgrade from 2013 to 2017. Our IT administrator installed the NI VLM on a server, and I upgraded all our clients. When I point each machine's License Manager to use the Network License, it picks up the license, but when we use LabVIEW it opens in Evaluation Mode. If I manually Activate the VLA serial number on each machine it a Local License and we can use LabVIEW normally.

 

If I need to manually activate the serial number, and LabVIEW uses the Local License anyway, then the Network License, and VLM seem useless. What am I missing? Probably something simple, but I just haven't seen it yet.

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You are not supposed to activate it locally.  You are only to use the server license.  Are you sure you have a good connection to the license server?  If not, you will get the evaluation mode.


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Yes, the connection should be good. Everything here is on the same LAN. And if I look in the License Manager, I can see the licenses from the VLM server. They're correctly applied based on the Windows username too (we have a mix of Full/Pro). After I activate locally, I usually delete the local activation, and everything continues to work. I'd just rather not do that for every machine we setup.

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I bet your "IT guy" did not "Press Apply Changes" after setting up all the users on the VLM server. 

 

Something like that happened here when we went to VLA and we had similar problems with getting the VLM server to work properly.

-----

 

Hi Robert,

 

To verify that I understand the problem correctly, one of the clients can't check out licenses from the server, this client used to activate software and use them that way. But now the client has moved to volume licensing and needs to check out licenses from the server. You have tried to ping the server and the port 27000, you have used the server domain name in the client NI License Manager, you are sure that "apply changes" is greyed out in NI VLM, and non have worked.

 

 

Sincerely,
Edna Shamouni
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

 

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=== Engineer Ambiguously ===
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He took a look, and everything is applied/saved correctly. One of the reasons we switched to the VLA was ease of management... sort of regretting that now. This licensing process has been a real hassle.

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@OneOfTheDans wrote:

He took a look, and everything is applied/saved correctly. One of the reasons we switched to the VLA was ease of management... sort of regretting that now. This licensing process has been a real hassle.


Yeah, someone at my company was sold that "bill of goods" too and we all regret it now...

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=== Engineer Ambiguously ===
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@RTSLVU wrote:

@OneOfTheDans wrote:

He took a look, and everything is applied/saved correctly. One of the reasons we switched to the VLA was ease of management... sort of regretting that now. This licensing process has been a real hassle.


Yeah, someone at my company was sold that "bill of goods" too and we all regret it now...


Really?  When we implemented it at my first job, it made things a lot easier (floating licenses, can be installed at multiple machines and just used based on the job I am doing).  And where I am now, it is maintained at another site, so even more hands off for me and the only issue I have is waiting for the server to get updated for the latest version (my 2018 is still under an Evaluation license).  Granted, this assumes things were actually set up properly.

 

Were your licenses set up to be Name based or Computer based?  Are you sure your admin installed the proper license file?


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I wish we had another site maintaining it... the issues we're having are probably errors on our part while we're working out the kinks with VLA. It would be nice if someone had figured all that out already so we can just get on with our work.

 

Anyway, our license is setup as Named User for all seats. Everything in the NI License Manager client looks ok, so I think the admin must have used the correct license file. NI LM shows correct number of seats on Full, Pro, and CVI. But on all machines, LabVIEW will only open in evaluation mode unless you go through the activation process, which requires a serial number.

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@crossrulz wrote:

@RTSLVU wrote:

@OneOfTheDans wrote:

He took a look, and everything is applied/saved correctly. One of the reasons we switched to the VLA was ease of management... sort of regretting that now. This licensing process has been a real hassle.


Yeah, someone at my company was sold that "bill of goods" too and we all regret it now...


Really?  When we implemented it at my first job, it made things a lot easier (floating licenses, can be installed at multiple machines and just used based on the job I am doing).  And where I am now, it is maintained at another site, so even more hands off for me and the only issue I have is waiting for the server to get updated for the latest version (my 2018 is still under an Evaluation license).  Granted, this assumes things were actually set up properly.

 

Were your licenses set up to be Name based or Computer based?  Are you sure your admin installed the proper license file?


You must have a different deal with NI because there are no "floating licences" in our organization, even with the VLA all installations are tied a specific user and the specific machine they are using. Basically they just go to the VLM server to get activated instead of NI.

 

Makes it a real P.I.T.A. for me as my development station is on my office. So I have to develop there because that machine is on the same network as the VLM. Then I have to created an EXE and take it via flash drive to the lab that is on a different network, install it, note any bugs, go back to my office and work on it. God forbid I ever need to use the remote debugger... (I actually have but if I get caught by our IT department putting lab computers on the corporate network I will be in trouble)

 

Back in the days before VLA (right or wrong) I could install LabVIEW on all the machines in the lab and activate them all with the same serial number. I do not believe this was illegal because I am the only LabVIEW programmer in our department so I was the only one who used the development environment and would provide exe's for everyone else to use.

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=== Engineer Ambiguously ===
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@RTSLVU wrote:

You must have a different deal with NI because there are no "floating licences" in our organization, even with the VLA all installations are tied a specific user and the specific machine they are using. Basically they just go to the VLM server to get activated instead of NI.


The first instance, it was named licenses.  My current situation is an Enterprise Agreement that my "mothership" (a very large defense company) negotiated with NI, so we have true floating licenses.

 

As far as the rest of your situation, engineering grade laptops can alleviate that quite a bit.  You can then take it off network and do whatever debugging and development you need to in the lab.  Even off network, you should be given a 7 day evaluation until the next time you bring up LabVIEW while connected to the network with the VLM server.


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