- ドングル方式のライセンスでは、特定のアプリケーションバージョン用の保護されたソフトウェア ライセンスが格納されたポータブルUSBデバイスを使用します。
- ローカルドングルは1台のマシンで使用されるのに対し、ネットワークドングルはサーバーベースのツールを通じてライセンスの使用状況情報を提供することができます。
- Open iT LicenseAnalyzer ホスト、シリアル番号、ベンダー、機能、ユーザー、利用可能なライセンス、有効期間、利用率、経過時間など、ドングルの使用状況の詳細を報告することができます。
ドングルはUSBポートに接続され、1つのアプリケーションの1つのバージョンのライセンスを保持します。概念としては単純ですが、大規模な環境での管理は複雑です。 ローカル・ドングルは単一のマシンに紐付けられますが、ネットワーク・ドングルはサーバーを介して動作し、管理者が実際に活用できる利用情報を生成します。Open iT LicenseAnalyzer は、ホスト、シリアル番号、ベンダー、機能、ユーザー、利用可能なライセンス、期間、利用率、経過時間ごとにドングルの利用状況を報告します。これにより、物理的なセキュリティモデルを、ネットワークライセンス方式のアプリケーションと同様に、測定可能で最適化可能な利用状況の全体像へと変えます。
When it comes to software licensing, most users demand and lean towards the most flexible, manageable, secure, and protected solutions. It is more appealing when the licensing solution and design provides the need of the users to efficiently and optimally utilize expensive software licenses.
One of the known secure and protected software licensing solutions introduced by ISVs is dongle licensing. It is an electronic portable device that contains protected copy of the software license for a specific version of an application. Software licensing is done commonly through network and parallel ports or even through individual software installation. But dongle licensing uses USB ports making it more portable and very easy to share among various users.
Dongle-based licensing has two modes of installation: local and network. Local dongle licensing is done by plugging a dongle into the USB port of the computer. The license on this installation cannot be shared with other users in the network, but it can be used by another user by plugging the specific dongle into the computer with the same application to be licensed. A network type of installation is like a server-client model, it has a configured license server which contains the dongle server software and the computer using the license through the network should have the runtime files of the dongle license server.
Commonly, only the network-based installation of dongle licensing has the capability for reporting and providing overview of the license usage. There are utilities installed together with the dongle that provide license information, but the more complete report is provided by the dongle license server. For instance, the WibuKey system has its license monitor tool (WkSvMOn) installed together with the WibuKey license server. WkSvMOn is a tool that provides all the necessary information and overview about the active licenses during operation.
Another tool, used by Codemeter dongle, is the WebAdmin. It is a web-based portal that provides various capabilities and overviews on the license usage of the Codemeter license connector connected to the Codemeter license server through the network. This powerful tool is installed together with the Codemeter license server.
これらのツールは、以下の情報を提供します。
- ライセンスを使用している同時使用ユーザー数
- Start time when the users first accessed the license;
- ユーザーがライセンスを使用する期間（長さ）。
- 利用可能なライセンス数；
- 共有ライセンス数
Having these reporting tools is very useful when there is a specific provider and a license server. However, if the company has local dongles only and no license server, or has both Codemeter and Wibukey, monitoring and reporting of license usage will be tedious because there is no centralized view for all.
This is when a powerful Engineering Software Management tool that supports dongle-based licensing, together with other licensing methods, would be very useful. This tool could use polling and log parsing mechanisms to fetch license information and usage for each installed dongle.
ポーリング
License status utilities can be designed to fetch data from the dongles C-based API. This API is responsible for providing license inventory of all the connected dongles. With these utilities, specific poll parsers can be executed to convert the collected raw dongle data to the appropriate format for report generation. The dongle needs to be plugged into the computer where the data collector is installed to properly capture the license usage.
ログ・パーシング
With log parsing, log files are parsed and processed to fetch essential information to produce license usage reports. This method of data collection is more helpful since it is historical. All the data from the first time log files have been generated up to the current time can be read, parsed, and reported. Data collectors should be installed in the license server for this to work.
データレポート
収集したデータを通じて、様々な重要なレポートを作成することができます。Open iT® LicenseAnalyzer™Dongle レポートツールには、以下の情報に関するレポートを作成する機能があります：
- Host – hostname of the license
- Serial Number – serial number of the dongle
- Vendor – vendor name or firmname of the dongle
- Vendor Code – vendor code or firmcode of the dongle
- Feature – application name or the licensed feature
- Feature Version – application versio
- User – username of the license user
- 利用可能なライセンス
- Duration – total amount of time of license usage
- 平均使用ライセンス数
- 最大使用ライセンス数
- 平均使用率
- 最大使用率
- Elapsed Time – combined time of license usage
Using this information, managing and controlling over various dongle-based licenses, such as WibuKey, Codemeter and Vector, is easier and more manageable.
ドングルベースのライセンスを他のライセンシング方法と組み合わせて効果的に管理する方法の詳細をご覧ください。エンジニアリングソフトウェア 管理と最適化の旅は、当社にお任せください。
