General
License Borrowing is a method of linking a specific workstation to a single license instance from within the license pool. This procedure marks a license as being perpetually used on the license manager (LM), enables users to borrow a product license for a designated time period, and to operate the licensed application without connecting to the license manager.
OpenLM presents the identity of users who have borrowed ESRI licenses.
ESRI license administrators have long noticed that license borrowers are not identified by license server querying, i.e. by running lmutil -lmstat commands. Instead, the borrowed user is identified as “Activated License(s)”, which isn’t very helpful in understanding who is taking the license you need now.
Audit log information
By combining information from multiple sources, the OpenLM Server is able to determine the identity of license borrowers: Usage information is provided by License server querying, while the cross reference between the borrowed license and the user identity is provided by the ESRI Audit log.
The OpenLM Broker
The OpenLM Broker is an optional component which is run on the license server machine. It provides a degree of robustness to the data flow from the license server to the OpenLM server, and also complements the information gathered by the OpenLM server.
Examples for such additional information provided by the Broker are license denials statistics, and feature packaging information. In its latest released version 1.8, OpenLM has enhanced the broker to read ESRI Audit logs, and extract usage information for borrowed licenses.
The following image demonstrates the naming of a borrowed license:
This is yet another unique capability provided by OpenLM for Monitoring, Managing and Optimizing the usage of ESRI ArcGIS licenses.
For more information about the OpenLM Broker, and OpenLM benefits for ESRI users, please refer to these articles:
Application Note 2000: OpenLM system structure overview v1.8
Application Note 2004a: OpenLM Broker Quick guide version 1.8
Application Note 2004b: OpenLM Broker Comprehensive guide version 1.8
Application Note 2036: Set ESRI ArcGIS licensing Level
