Licensing and Permissions in new Licence Manager

Hi

following up a "admin privs needed for MicroStation" discussion, I'd like to know details:

For MicroStation, it's almost true that you can work without admin rights. Up to SS3 there was only issues that it reverted to a "per user" licensing setup - not a very big deal and unknown to users. With the lack of privileges to write into license config it would copy all "per machine" licensing information into every user - also the usage files were split over the users on that PC. Then it worked fine as long as you didn't have to change any fundamental licensing info.

In our company we allowed read/write permissions for domain users in the c:\programdata\bentley\licensing folder and the registry tree HKLM\software\wow6432node\bentley\licensing. That was it. The license config remained on "per machine" level, no zombie copies would spread around.

Starting with MicroStation SS4 there is a new option. The button "Elevate to all users" in the license manager 9.2.0.25. I'd like to know if that performs the same thing that I described above, and if it absolutly avoids "zombie copies".

Bigean

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  • Can we go into more detail here, or better non-public? Are there any wiki articles for IT people regarding licensing per group policy?
  • Thanks.

    So you can download a Group Policy template file, copy it to a certain directory on a domain server and open Microsoft GPO tools to edit the licensing info policy.

    You can enter server name, activation code and SSL communication. For activation key, you can also choose "hide from user". Can you also enter proxy settings like in the well-known licensetool dialog? And also the error log infos?

    When finished, you assign these settings to organizational units. You can form different org units with different licensing settings. As most of us are no domain experts, do you have choices like user groups, machine groups for organizational units? ip ranges? machine name wildcards? what are popular scenarios?

    Another question: Is it then possible to assign different users with different license settings on one and the same PC? Or is the licensing always "per PC"?

    Once the policy is live, the licensing info is pushed to the PC on every Windows login of users, and remains unchangable for the user.

    I have even more questions regarding siteid info in registry, timestamps, version and install info in the registry and permissons of the license.log usage files in that scenario in SS4. Public discussion, or too sensitive for here?

  • You can enter server name, activation code and SSL communication. For activation key, you can also choose "hide from user". Can you also enter proxy settings like in the well-known licensetool dialog? And also the error log infos?

    While settings from the Error Logging tab in the License Management Tool are not offered in the group policy template, it can specify proxy settings as shown in the following screenshot:

    When finished, you assign these settings to organizational units. You can form different org units with different licensing settings. As most of us are no domain experts, do you have choices like user groups, machine groups for organizational units? ip ranges? machine name wildcards? what are popular scenarios?

    This is venturing into the specifics of group policy management, but yes, group policy can be applied to specific groups of computers as mentioned in Microsoft's Group Policy for Beginners guide.

    Another question: Is it then possible to assign different users with different license settings on one and the same PC? Or is the licensing always "per PC"?

    Yes, according to the beginner's guide referenced above, group policy can be applied to users as well as computers.

    Once the policy is live, the licensing info is pushed to the PC on every Windows login of users, and remains unchangable for the user.

    Yes, the policy is applied to the users and computers specified. License settings applied via the group policy cannot be edited by the user.

    I have even more questions regarding siteid info in registry, timestamps, version and install info in the registry and permissons of the license.log usage files in that scenario in SS4. Public discussion, or too sensitive for here?

    Let us try to keep it in the forums for now as other users may benefit. We can always move the conversation offline if necessary. What are your questions?