Sentinel LM may be configured to log license token usage in a few simple steps. Logging license usage will allow you to monitor your PIPE-FLO/PUMP-FLO users, and will allow you to determine what licensing problems may exist. Usage logging combined with reporting tools and other tools such as group reservations can allow you to ensure that the users that need PIPE-FLO/PUMP-FLO licenses are able to get them.

Usage logging is disabled by default in Sentinel LM. To enable logging, create an environment variable called "LSERVOPTS". In Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, this environment variable can be created by right clicking on your "My Computer" icon and then clicking on "Properties". Click on the "Advanced" tab and click on the "Environment variables" button. Create a System Variable with Variable Name: "LSERVOPTS" and Variable value "–l usage-log-file" where usage-log-file should be replaced with the path and filename you wish to use for your log file (e.g. "–l c:\usage.log"). Note that you must include the entire path to the location where you wish your log file to be created. Once you have specified the "LSERVOPTS" environment variable, you will need to restart your license server software to start the usage logging.

Your usage log file will have the format displayed in Figure 1. The information logged in this file includes the date and time the license token was checked out, the date and time the license token was checked in, the user and computer who used the license token, and whether a license token was obtained successfully by a given user.

LSUSAGE.exe

Once Sentinel LM has logged usage of the PIPE-FLO license tokens, you can use a utility named "LSUSAGE.exe" to view a summary of your license usage. "LSUSAGE.exe" is contained in the "ServerTools" folder on the PIPE-FLO CD. LSUSAGE must be run from the command prompt. To view results of "LSUSAGE.exe", in the command prompt type "lsusage –l usage-log-file". You will see a screen similar to Figure 2.

LSUSAGE will tell you the percentage of requests that were able to obtain license tokens as well the percentage of requests that were denied a license token because all other tokens were in use. LSUSAGE also tells you the how long (duration) tokens are used.

ReportDB.mdb

If you would like a more detailed report of license usage, you can use "lsusage.exe" to export the contents of the log file into a CSV (comma separated value) file. This CSV file can then be imported into the Microsoft Access database "ReportDB.mdb" which is included in the "ServerTools" folder on the PIPE-FLO CD. This Access database has been pre-configured to generate a number of reports that will provide you with detailed information about your company's use of PIPE-FLO.

To export to a CSV file, at the command prompt, type "lsusage –l usage-log-file –c csv-file" where csv-file is the full path and filename of the CSV file you wish to create.

To generate reports using "ReportDB.mdb", open "ReportDB.mdb" with Microsoft Access. If you receive an error message indicating that the database may have been created with an older version of the Rainbow reporting utility, close the database and click on "Tools" > "Database Utilities" > "Convert Database" > "To Current Access Version". Choose the name and location for the converted database.

To import your CSV file into this database, click on "File" > "Get External Data" > "Import". Choose "Text Files" from the "Files of Type" drop-down box. Select your CSV file and click on the "Import" button. Select "Delimited" as your text file type. Select comma as your delimiter. Choose "In Existing Table" and choose "lservlog" as your table. You can now click on "Tables" and open the "lservlog" table to view your usage data, or you can click on the "Reports" tab and double click on the report of your choice to generate a report using your usage data.