Leased License and Citrix farm

[#1]

Hi guys,

I have a client QlikView published on a Citrix Server Farm (load balancing) and can run on a server or another (for the same user).

If I have a named cal borrowed from a QVS, it is valid on all servers or only on the first one i get the license? Are there problems with the machine id of the different server?

Thanks very much

[vgutkovsky]

Stefano,

This may be a problem from a licensing point of view. When you borrow a CAL from a QVS, that information is stored in a file called "BorrowedCalData.pgo." This file is encrypted and is stored in each server's root AccessPoint directory, as well as in the C:\ProgramData\QlikTech\Qvs directory. A desktop client will only check once every 30 days to see if the lease is still valid, so if you have 2 servers you would essentially be cheating (since the other server's BorrowedCalData file wouldn't register the lease). I would suggest you talk to you QlikTech account representative to make sure this is not a license violation. Alternatively, you can create a Farm where each QVS has the exact same information (computer name, configuration, etc). If you are using v10, you can move the ProgramData folder contents and the AccessPoint directory onto a network drive and share this between all the servers. This should allow them all to use the same licensing information such that each would be aware of license leases on the other server. I believe this will only work if the boxes are identical though (and even then I'm not positive since I've never tried this).

Regards,

[#3]

Thanks Vlad,

but i don't have a farm of qvs, but a citrix farm with the stand-alone version published. Users need a leased license, but the app can run on different server every times.

[vgutkovsky]

Stefano,

You lost me, but that may just be because I'm not a Citrix expert. In your setup, you have QVS installed on only 1 box or multiple? If it's only on one server, then I don't understand how QVS can run on different servers every time...

[#5]

Sorry Vlad,

QVS is external to the Citrix Farm, I use it to lease the license to qlikview clients (qv.exe) that run on citrix servers.

Stefano

[vgutkovsky]

Ah, now I understand! I don't think this will be a problem. License leases are at a User level, not a machine level (typically, although you can configure it otherwise). So you may have to release the license from each server, but it won't use 2 licenses per user. I hope that makes sense. Unfortunately, there's no automated way that I know of to lease a license, so you may have to instruct your users to do it on each machine. It may be possible by copying some registry keys, but I would tread very carefully and contact your account rep to make sure it's not a license violation.

Regards,

[struniger]

Hi Stefano,

We have the same set-up. 1x QVS Server (10.0.8811.6), QV-Clients (10 SR1) run on Citrix Server Farm.
And there is indeed a problem getting the leases to work.

What we have found is, that the license seems to be attached to a specific server in the citrix farm for a given period of time (probably 24hrs, however we have not checked this). So when opening the QV Client on Citrix Server A with user john.doe, a license is leased to this user/machine id. After closing the session and re-opening the QV Client with user john.doe, however on Citrix Server B, we do not get a license. An inspection of the settings.ini shows that the license lease is labelled INVALID.

Support was not able to explain this behaviour to me so far, unfortunately, but we're working on the issue. Nor have they indicated a license agreement breach...

One possible workaround would be to make the Qlikview Client only start from one specific Citrix Server - this, however, counteracts the load balancing. We haven't tried this yet, as we want to check back with QV support.

I'd be interested if you have any other ways of solving this.

Best of luck

Stefan

[Denis_Brajkovic]

The license lease works as following:

To lease a license you must have a user CAL (that is the main prerequisite). In my example I'll the AD user myDomain\userA

Then, to lease a license, myDomain\userA logs in on any machine where Qlikview is installed , chooses the "Open in server" option in QV Developer and obtain a leased license. The "thing" is that the leased license now is tied to myDomain\userA and the specific machine. As you're allowed to lease a license twice the same procedure can be performed on yet another machine. If myDomain\userA would try to lease on a third machine then it would fail as that would be a third attempt. A license lease allows a user to work offline for 30 days e.g. you don't have to reconnect to the QVS during that period. When it comes to this specific Citrix issue it you would like to have a more "movable" license lease but that is however not possible. The license lease is, as mentioned before, tied to a specific user and machine.

I hope this clears things a bit.

[#9]

Dear Stefan,

thanks for your answer.

Stefan T. wrote:
One possible workaround would be to make the Qlikview Client only start from one specific Citrix Server - this, however, counteracts the load balancing. We haven't tried this yet, as we want to check back with QV support.

at the moment we asked the customer to run QlikView just like that, and the workaround works ok.

But, as You say, this undermines the load balancing.

In addition, the customer asks what to do if a user works with a notebook, and the notebook has a failure. It must wait for the expiry of the quarantine period, before the user can work again.

At the moment we haven't an official answer to this issue

Best,
Stefano

[struniger]

Hi Stefano,

Just as a follow-up.

Support has confirmed that you can lease a license twice (with different machine IDs). The license is then blocked for 24hrs and cannot be leased by any other userid/machineID combination. (see post by dbc, 2.5.2011 09.04h)

Solutions proposed are:

(a) Set Citrix to only start Qlikview from one (or two) specific servers. This counteracts the balance loading of Citrix

(b) Do (a) but specific to Citrix Users. This equals manual load balancing and creates administrative effort

(c) Instruct Qlikview Developers to only use one Citrix Session per day. This will ensure that only one userID/machineID combination is needed in every workday.

We have now implemented (a) and this is working with our rather small community of QV Desktop Users.

Due to the factual de-activation of load-balancing for Qlikview Desktop Users, we have set-up a monitoring on the specific server we chose to see when this is getting out of hands.

Qlikview Support is aware of the issue and is hoping to provide a solution with some of the next release(s).

Happy Qlikviewing

Stefan