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  7. How to Set up the Ephesoft Transact License Server

How to Set up the Ephesoft Transact License Server

Overview

This article describes how an Ephesoft Transact administrator can set up one or more license servers according to the deployment requirements:

  • A license server is part of a standard Ephesoft Transact installation. A license server for Ephesoft Transact is not a separate application.
  • The license server can be enabled or disabled according to requirements.

Configuration

Ephesoft Transact includes a default license server failover mechanism. If a user has configured a multi-server environment where some servers are acting as license servers and others are configured as license clients, the Ephesoft license server failover mechanism takes control over all license servers. The license failover mechanism ensures that all the licensing requests are fulfilled in an uninterrupted manner, even in the case that one of the license servers goes down while other servers remain operational.

There are two modes in that cover most deployments of Ephesoft Transact:

  • single-server mode
  • multi-server mode

This article describes how to configure the license server or servers for either mode.

Single-server (Standalone) Mode

In single-server mode, the administrator user is not required to make specific license server configurations.

  • By default, Ephesoft Transact includes and enables the license server and client on that system.
  • The login screen provides a message that currently only one license server is active. Please start at least one more license server to utilize the License Server failover Mechanism.
  • This message informs the user that the current single-server installation is not running the license failover mechanism.

Multi-server Mode

In multi-server mode, the administrator user has completed a number of configurations, as described in the following resources:

After completing other deployment steps, the administrator must enable the license server on one or more of the existing servers.

In addition, the administrator must enable or disable the license failover mechanism on the license server or servers.

  • In both modes, the generated license should support sufficient license cores to run all the servers in the cluster, up to the maximum number of license servers.
  • A later topic in this document describes licenses required for cores in a multi-server cluster.

The following two topics describe the required configurations for configuring a license server in a multi-server environment, with or without the failover mode.

License Server Configuration without the License Failover Mechanism

When disabling the license failover mechanism in a multi-server environment, the administrator requires a single license server that has sufficient license cores to serve all the Ephesoft Transact servers in the multi-server setup.

Perform the following steps to configure the license server in a multi-server environment with the license failover mechanism disabled.

1. Install the Ephesoft Transact license on one of the servers in the multi-server environment. The following documents provide additional information about installing the Ephesoft Transact license:

2. Once the license is installed on this server, treat that server separately, and disable the license server function on all other servers in the cluster. Refer to the instructions at the end of this document.

3. Once the license server function is disabled on all other servers, start the dedicated license server. The license server must be started prior to starting the other servers in the cluster. The license server must be available when starting each of the additional servers in the cluster.

4. Once the Ephesoft Transact license server has been started with its own license enabled, start each additional server in the cluster one at a time. At the end of this step, every server on the cluster is licensed and ready for full operation.

In this multi-server configuration, the administrator must ensure that the license server in the cluster is always running. This server is the sole license server in the cluster.

Note:    If the license server shuts down or goes offline, all other servers in the cluster will stop working because their licenses are not available.

License Server Configuration with the License Failover Mechanism

In this mode, the administrator requires a minimum of two dedicated license servers in the cluster:

  • One license server will serve licensing requests.
  • The other license server acts as a backup license server and performs license operations if the first license server fails or goes offline.

Perform the following steps to configure the license failover mechanism on two license servers in the cluster:

1. Install the Ephesoft Transact license on the two dedicated license servers in the cluster. The administrator must ensure each license server has sufficient licenses for all servers in the cluster. The following documents provide additional information about installing the Ephesoft Transact license:

2. Once the license is installed on the two dedicated license servers, disable the license server function on all additional servers in the cluster. Refer to the instruction at the end of this document.

3. Once the license server function is disabled on all other servers, start the first of two dedicated license servers. After the first license server is started, start the second backup license server. This server will automatically begin to perform licensing operations for the cluster if the first license server fails or goes offline.

Note:   The administrator must start the two license servers first so they are available when starting all additional servers in the cluster.

4. Once the two license servers are started, start each additional server in the cluster, one at a time. At the end of this step, every server on the cluster is licensed and ready for full operation.

When using the license failover mechanism, the administrator must ensure that both license servers are operational before starting all additional servers.

Once the license failover configuration is complete, the administrator user can take down any server in the cluster for maintenance without affecting batch processing on the cluster.

Annual Image Count

Licensing for Ephesoft Transact governs the number of pages that can be processed annually by that license.

While generating a license, the user must provide information about the number of pages he would like to process in a year.

Once the number of pages processed by Ephesoft Transact exceeds the setting cited in the license, the user will not be able to process any additional pages until the license is updated.

Refer to the following document for additional information:

Licensing Policy Changes – Version 4.5.x.x and later

Calculating the License Core Requirements for a Multi-server Cluster

In a multi-server cluster, it is possible to separate the UI servers, license server and processing servers.

  • The Ephesoft Transact servers only require a 4-license core, irrespective of the CPU core of UI servers.
  • The processing server requires a license core equal to the number of CPU cores on the server.
    • For example, if there are five machines in a cluster, there can be one UI server and four processing servers.
    • Of the four processing servers, two of the servers can have eight CPU core machines, and two can have 16 CPU core machines.
    • In such a cluster setup, the administrator must have a 52-core license (8+8+16+16 = 48-license core for processing servers, and a 4-license core for the UI server).

Configuring a UI Server for an Ephesoft Transact Cluster

To configure an Ephesoft Transact server to function as a UI server, perform the following steps:

1. Set the property thread.pool_size to 0.

This is available in the dcma-core.properties file in the following location:

{Application_home}\WEB-INF\classes\META-INF\dcma-core\* directory

2. Set the property server.instance.max.process.capacity to 0 and server.instance.max.process.capacity.mode=1.

This is available in the dcma-workflows.properties file in the following location:

{Application_home}\WEB-INF\classes\META-INF\dcma-workflows\* directory

Enabling or Disabling an Ephesoft Transact License Server

The Ephesoft Transact license server runs as an independent module under Ephesoft application that can be enabled or disabled as required.

To enable or disable Ephesoft license server user need to uncomment/comment following lines from the application-context.xml file available under {Application_home}\* directory.

<import resource=”classpath:/META-INF/applicationContext-license-server.xml” />

Troubleshooting

The following error messages may occur in the log file if there is improper configuration or execution of the license server:

due to improper configuration and execution:

Error Message Possible Root Cause
1 CPU limit exhausted. Can’t allocate more CPUs. The total count of CPU cores available in all machines in a multi-server environment is greater than the count specified in the license installed. Obtain a new license with the correct CPU core amount.
2 Invalid license for multi-server environment setup. Either the MAC ID of the server was not included, or it was entered incorrectly while generating the Ephesoft Transact license. Please verify the MAC ID while generating the license.