Obtaining an ACEMD license#

ACEMD licenses:

One can check the status of the commercial license with the following command

acemd --license

Commercial license#

Deployment options:

  • Node-locked license is locked to a specific machine. It is recommended for invidual workstations and small HPC clusters.

  • Floating license works by connecting to a licensing server hosted internally. It is recommended for large HPC clusters.

  • Cloud license works by connecting to a licensing server hosted by Acellera. It is recommend for cloud and virtualized environments.

Node-locked license#

A node-locked license is locked to a specific machine by its MAC address. One will have to provide such address when purchasing the license.

The license is issued in a form of a license file (license.dat), which needs to be placed at one of the following locations:

  • ~/.acellera/license.dat

  • /opt/acellera/license.dat

Alternatively, the path of the license file can be set with the environment variable ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE

export ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE=/tmp/license.dat

To not have to export this environment variable every time a new shell is opened, one can add the command to the end of the shell configuration file (e.g. ~/.bashrc) depending on the shell being used.

To ensure the environment variable is set, open a new console and execute

env | grep ACELLERA_LICENCE_FILE

which should print out the environment variable with the path.

Floating license#

A floating license works by connecting to a licensing server. Any machine having access to a license server can use it. The maximum number of concurrent licenses is agreed when purchasing the license. Additionally, one will have to provide the MAC address of the machine where the license server will be deployed.

The license is issued in a form of a license file (license.dat), which needs to be deployed in the license server. After deploying the license server, its IP address (or hostname) and port number is provided to a user.

The user has to set the IP address (e.g. 192.168.0.1) and port number (e.g. 27000) with the environment variable ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER

export ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER=27000@192.168.0.1

Cloud license#

A cloud license works by connecting to a licensing server hosted by Acellera. Any machine having access to the license server can use it. The maximum number of concurrent licenses is agreed when purchasing the license.

The license is issued in a form of a public IP address (e.g. 35.237.46.128) and port number (e.g. 27000), which have to be set with the environment variable ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER

export ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER=27000@35.237.46.128

License server#

The floating license requires a license server. It should be deployed on a machine that is accessible via the network.

Requirements for the hosting machine:

  • CentOS 7 or other compatible OS

  • Fixed MAC address

  • root access

Download the server

curl -s https://software.acellera.com/floating-licence-server.tar.gz | tar xzvf -

Install the server. Note that install.sh has to be executed as root user. By default, the server is installed to /opt/acellera and executed as sglmd user. This can be changed by setting the environment variables ROOT and USER, respecively

cd floating-licence-server && sudo ./install.sh

Copy the license file (license.dat) to /opt/acellera. Note, /opt/acellera/license.dat has to be readable by sglmd user.

Start the license server

service acellera.sglmd start

Validate that the server has started

tail /var/log/acellera.sglmd.log

2020/01/01 00:00:00 Server starting on localhost, port 27000, max components 64, max connections 256
Enabling acemd 3.0 512 01-jan-2025
Ready...

This means that the server is accepting license requests on part 27000. It can issue up to 512 concurrent licenses of ACEMD until the 1st of January, 2025.

Finally, validate the server from a remote machine. This assumes that the server is running on license.internal.acellera.com and a firewall is configured to allow TCP connections to port 27000

$ export ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER=27000@license.internal.acellera.com
$ acemd --license
# Licence:
#   Check floating licence:
#     ACELLERA_LICENCE_SERVER -- not defined
#     ACELLERA_LICENSE_SERVER (27000@license.internal.acellera.com) -- GRANTED
#   Check node-locked licence:
#     ACELLERA_LICENCE_FILE -- not defined
#     ACELLERA_LICENSE_FILE -- not defined
#     /opt/acellera/licence.dat -- DENIED (Unable to locate target file)
#     /opt/acellera/license.dat -- DENIED (Unable to locate target file)
#     /home/raimis/.acellera/licence.dat -- DENIED (Unable to locate target file)
#     /home/raimis/.acellera/license.dat -- DENIED (Unable to locate target file)