HPC/Application licenses

Introduction

Licenses for several high-profile commercial applications are hosted on servers within the Carbon HPC cluster. Applications consuming these licenses can run at the following network locations:

1. As a standalone application on an external computer.
2. Interactively on Carbon's login nodes, either in a virtual desktop (VNC), or displaying on your own X11 display.
3. Non-interactively (as a batch job) on Carbon's compute node.

The current page describes network requirements for situation 1. The other situations require no networking considerations for license access, though they do for remote graphics, which is described elsewhere

License servers

Carbon's license servers are:

clicense1
clicense2
clicense3

They must be reachable and accessed by these short host names (having no domain part), more below.

Remote computer requirements

The target computer must meet all of the following requirements:

• be Argonne-owned,
• have the application pre-installed, or hold a download of the application's online installer or the offline DVD package(s),
• be able to reach the Carbon license servers (components of the Carbon HPC cluster) over the network by short host name.

Thus, the computer must:

• be on a wired network connection in building 440/441 at Argonne, or
• the Argonne-auth WiFi network in the same building, or
• be on a VPN connection that has been opened by the user account of a CNM staff member, which includes regular employees, postdocs, and students, since only this HR status will place the user in the correct firewall perimeter,

or the computer must:

• have an SSH connection open to Mega that has been configured to forward ("tunnel)" Carbon's license server network ports.

To resolve short host names, the target computer's network profile settings must include the DNS domains cnm.anl.gov and nst.anl.gov. That is automatic for SSH, but in all other cases the domains usually must be added explicitly in the computer's network configuration.

Eligible Users

For installation and running a licensed application on a non-HPC computer, the user account that is active to run the application (and sometimes even the installer), must:

• belong to the end user (who must be an Argonne employee, not an external CNM Facility User), or an IT colleague, and
• have the ability to install applications on the target computer (already be local admin, as opposed to become local admin), and
• have been authorized to access the application license. – Sed the specific account name and application requested to Dr. Sternberg.

The user accounts used for installation vs. running an application need not and often are not the same.

Available license tokens

• A license must be available to run the application, and for some applications, even to run the installer.

Applications

Find applications-specific details at:

• HPC/Applications/comsol
• HPC/Applications/lumerical