Lumerical Quick-Start License Server AMI Configuration

Overview

The process and guidelines in this article has been update for the Lumerical license that is running on the Ansys License Manager 

Prerequisites

1. Request a trial and/or contact sales@lumerical.com for your 8-digit floating mac-locked license.
2. Access to Lumerical Quick-Start AMIs
3. Create and configure your VPC and Security Group
4. Create a key-pair

Pricing

For the license server, we recommend using a t3.nano instance with a 10GB gp2 EBS volume. Using AWS Cost Calculator this will roughly cost 4.80$/month to run (USD, 1$/month for storage and 3.80$ for compute). We recommend that you run this calculation yourself using the region you will be operating in for a more accurate and up to date estimate.

Note: The license server can be "stopped" at any time when it is not needed. You will continue to be charged for its EBS resources, but not for the EC2 resources. When the license server is started again the license service will automatically come back online (after a few minutes). If no longer wish to pay anything for this instance you can "terminate" it, however, you will lose any active license activations on the instance. For this reason, we recommend enabling "termination protection" when creating this instance to protect against accidental termination.

Important

DO NOT TERMINATE your license server instance as you will lose the HostID information used to activate your license. 

Create a license server

We will create a small and inexpensive server to run the Lumerical license manager. Once you activate a license this server should persist until your license expires. You can stop (shutdown) this server to save costs when you aren’t running jobs. If you terminate (delete) the server you may invalidate your license file unless you detach and save the elastic network adapter. This more advanced use is not explained here.

To save effort building your own license server, Lumerical provides an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) with all the software pre-loaded. To get access to the AMIs, follow the instructions here. To create your license server follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the EC2 service in the AWS Console
2. Hit the launch instance button
3. Search for the AMI ID provided by Lumerical for the latest license manager server and select it
4. Choose the t3.nano instance type
5. Enable "Termination Protection" to protect against accidental termination of the License Server and the resultant loss of license activations.
6. Select your VPC and Subnet.
7. All the other default settings should be fine, check the video if in doubt
8. Change the storage to "30GB gp2" or more depending on what other applications you need to run on the license server and accept the defaults in the next pages.
9. On the configure security group, choose the group created for your cluster.
10. Review and launch your instance, selecting your key pair when prompted.
11. You will see your server instance running in your instances list  
    
    

Install the license manager

1. Download and install the Ansys License Manager.
2. Obtain the instance/machine HostID informationfrom the Ansys LM Center.
3. Activate your entitlementfrom the Ansys Licensing Portal.
4. Configure the license file with static ports and add/installthis into the Ansys LM on your server/instance. 
5. Verify from theAnsys LM Center > Display FlexNet license statusthat license manager is up and running and the licenses are available for checkout.
6. Log off or disconnect from your license server. 
7. Ensure that this license server instance is always up and running when you run simulations on your compute node.
8. Take note of your license server's 'private IP address'from the AWS management console.
9. You will use this for the Lumerical license configuration on your compute instance.
   

Checking license server status

SSH

At any time you can connect to the license server via ssh and check the status of your licenses by running the command:

/ansys_inc/shared_files/licensing/linx64/lmutil lmstat -a -c 1055@localhost 

ANSYS license management center 

• Log into your license server instance and open a web browser: 

http://localhost:8095

See also

Ansys entitlement activation  

Ansys license manager configuration and license file installation 

Checking the ANSYS license server status and license usage from the client machine