Cloud Computing Highlights the Need for Client-Side Caching

An increasing number of software vendors are hosting license servers in the Cloud for their end customers. The longer physical distance between client and the license server introduces more network latency.  License checkout times may be slower over these longer distances compared with those over a local area network. Applications with short duty-cycles or massively parallel applications that require frequent checkouts over a short period of time are affected the most. To address this challenge RLM supports “license caching” on the client.

Since v10.1, RLM lets software vendors create licenses that specify a “cache time” in seconds so that when licenses are checked out, RLM will create a cached license on the local client machine.  If the same user on this host subsequently checks out the license before the cache time expires, then the local cached license is used, avoiding a connection to the license server.

To use caching, the license must specify the keyword “client_cache=N” where N is duration of the cache period in seconds. Any license with a client_cache specification is treated by the license server identically to a license with a min_checkout specification.

For a more detailed technical description of this feature, please refer to the RLM Reference Manual section entitled “Client-Side License Caching.”