Remote License Dongles

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There is a capability available in all up-to-date shipping Cinegy software that allows you to retrieve its activation token from a dongle that is physically present on a different machine running the Cinegy License Service.

Advantages

This is not supported for critical production use at this time in mission-critical systems (e.g., Cinegy Air or Cinegy Capture). Although this technique has so far proven very stable, the concern is more related to a loss of network or over-subscription to some central dongle. Where the software is due to run on a virtual platform, this technique of distributing licenses is recommended over any other USB-sharing mechanisms that have certainly demonstrated reliability issues.

How to Use

The model allows a single machine to act as a license server, to which other machines address requests for connections. This machine may already be using a dongle in a normal manner, for example, as a Cinegy Archive server or a Cinegy Convert server. No alterations are required to the hosting machine, and firewall exceptions are only required if using the third-party firewall software or after a manual reconfiguration of Windows Firewall.

Client

The client machine requires the specification of the hosting machine via a DNS or IP address in the following registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cinegy LLC\Cinegy\License]

Inside this key, a single string value should be created with the name "LicenseServerAddress" and a value of the hosting machine name or address.

Note
 Please note, there are no requirements for this key to move depending on 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems or software versions; this key location is universal.

Once this key is set on the client, any local licenses will be bypassed and licenses from the configured host only will be used.

Server

The remote sharing server also has to allow/disallow the license sharing; the following registry key must be present.

For 32-bit operating system:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cinegy LLC\Cinegy\License]
"AllowRemoteConnections"=dword:00000001

For 64-bit operating system:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Cinegy LLC\Cinegy\License]
"AllowRemoteConnections"=dword:00000001

Inside the key the "AllowRemoteConnections" DWORD value must be created, specifying whether the remote connections are allowed.

Logging

It is possible to enable logging on a license server. The following registry key must be present:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Cinegy LLC\Cinegy\License\Logging]
"LogFolder"="E:\\SOURCES\\_License_Server_Logs"
"TraceLevel"=dword:00000005
"ErrorLevel"=dword:00000005
"DayStartAt"=dword:00000006
"RotateFrequency"=dword:00000018

  • LogFolder – specifies the folder location where the log files are stored;

  • TraceLevel – specifies the trace log level;

  • DayStartAt – defines when the new day starts if the log is set to be created every day;

  • RotateFrequency – defines how often a new log file is created (in hours).