Here at the University I work at we use a large number of license management software (mainly flexlm). This past semester I installed a new license management service that would be used to serve licenses to multiple labs in multiple buildings across campus. Unfortunately after installing it and deploying it to a large number of machines I realized that my Labview license manager had stopped working because both processes were trying to use the default port of 27000. At this point in time my only option was to change the port on the Labview license manager to a new port (in this case 27006). Unfortunately due to the current nature of Labview I now have to visit 100+ machines in my building and elsewhere and point them to <SERVER_NAME>:27006.
A peer here had a similar issue with the Autodesk software Autocad, which runs on a similar license manager. However, Autocad checks a range of ports automatically if their license server isn’t available on the default port. It would be nice if Labview would do the same. That is, check port 27000 for a license server, if not found, check 27001…up to 27009 then store the port in the software. Because of this, we do not have to tell Autocad which port the license server is on and if it changes, nothing needs to be done.
What I am suggesting is that users not be required to point to a given port if the default is not used. Instead, the Labview client look at 27000 on a given server, if not found, it looks to 27001, this continues up to a maximum of say 27009.
Another potential fix for such issues would be to have a registry key that can be updated through group policy. This existed in Windows XP but in Windows 7 this key was removed an instead an .ini files used.
Thank You,
Garret Coffman
