What Is the Managed Licensing Service?

You no longer need a physical machine on which you install the DS License Server. The license server is managed by Dassault Systèmes and is a highly available and scalable online service.

The service may be interrupted for planned maintenance for approximately fifteen minutes. You can be informed about impending managed licensing service upgrades by subscribing to an RSS feed provided by Dassault Systèmes. This action can be done from the following URL:

https://www.3ds.com/support/news/?woc=
%7B%22support%20category%22%3A%5B%22support%20category%2Fmanaged%20dsls%20maintenance%22%5D%7D

Routine license administration operations (for example, license enrollment) are handled by Dassault Systèmes. Nevertheless, you can still perform certain advanced administration tasks yourself (for example, setting authorization rules) by using the 3DEXPERIENCE Licensing Service Administration web user interface, which does not require you to install any additional software, via an URL provided by Dassault Systèmes.

For security reasons, the URL provided for web administration needs a first connection to Dassault Systèmes servers through a secured mechanism, the 3DPassport. Initially, if you do not already have one, you need to create an account and use it later. After logging in using the 3DPassport, a second login provides access to the 3DEXPERIENCE Licensing Service Administration web user interface. The browsers supported are the same as those supported by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

When ordering license keys, you must specify first of all that you want to operate in managed licensing service mode.

You will then receive an e-mail from Dassault Systèmes containing:

• an authentication file (described in What Is An Authentication File?)
• one administration URL for connecting directly to the Licensing Service Administration Web User Interface, for example:

  https://customerID-eu1-licensing-3.3dexperience.3ds.com

• three service connection hostnames for accessing the license server failover:

  customerID-eu1-licensing.3dexperience.3ds.com
  customerID-eu1-licensing-1.3dexperience.3ds.com
  customerID-eu1-licensing-2.3dexperience.3ds.com

  where customerID is your customer identifier provided by Dassault Systèmes.

To ensure that only the licenses belonging to you are granted to the licensing client, licensing clients require authentication. Consequently, you have to deploy a new authentication file.

The authentication file has a .LIC extension, and is generated once for your site. Licensing clients (and optionally the license administration web interface) authenticate themselves against the managed licensing service thanks to this file. The authentication file must be deployed on all your licensing client machines.

Unlike license keys, the authentication file is not tied to a ComputerID, enabling you to deploy it on several computers, including virtual machines. It is common to Version 5 and 3DEXPERIENCE licensing clients, has no expiration date, and you can deploy it only once.

Nevertheless, in the event of theft, you can of course request a new authentication file. The new file invalidates and supersedes the previous file, thereby preventing unauthorized usage of the previous file. You will then have to redeploy the new file on all your licensing clients.