You must configure licensing before using Cadence products. When a user starts a product, the product checks out a license from a license server, similar to the way people check out books from a library. The license server determines which products are available and distributes licenses on a first-come, first-served basis until all licenses for a given product are in use. When the user exits the product, the product returns the license to the license server. Licensing is normally transparent to the person using the Cadence applications.
Cadence bases its licensing software on the FlexNet™ license manager from Flexera Software. Cadence has added several features to FlexNet licensing to better meet the needs of Cadence users:
- Alternative methods of locating the license file (
clientsfile and CDS_LIC_FILE) so that Cadence licensing does not interfere withLM_LICENSE_FILEand other FlexNet-based licensing
- Improved error messages and solutions(lic_error and Licensing Utilities)
Cadence does not support several FlexNet features, such as INCREMENT, UPGRADE, FEATURESET, LINGER.
The license server supports Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Google Compute Engine (GCE) and Microsoft Azure, which let you run the license server in the cloud.
IPv6 networks are supported for Cadence applications using License SDK version 19.02-p001 or above. You can determine the License SDK version from the Product Release notes or by running the application with the CDS_LIC_QA_TesT environment variable pointing to a log file. The License SDK version is displayed at the top of the generated log file.
Cadence applications connecting to the license manager using older versions of License SDK cannot recognize IPv6 network configurations. See Setting Variables for IPv6 Network Support for more information.