Overview
Deadline 8 now supports Floating and Usage Based Licensing (UBL) models. With traditional Floating Licenses, you still require one floating license per render node. So if you have 50 render nodes, you will require 50 floating licenses.
With UBL, you can pre-pay for on-demand render time by the hour by visiting the Thinkbox Store:
store.thinkboxsoftware.com/
The render nodes will consume this render time on a per-minute level, and they will ONLY do so while they are rendering jobs. They will not consume this render time when they are idle or offline. So if you were to buy 24 hours of render time, you could render with 1 render node for a day, 2 render nodes for half a day, 12 render nodes for 2 hours, etc.
Note that these licensing models are not exclusive of each other. They can be used separately or together, across local, remote, or cloud-based render nodes.
This post is meant as a brief introduction to the different licensing options (including the three different ways to consume UBL), and we recommend reading the Licensing section of the Deadline 8 documentation for more information. The Deadline 8 documentation can be found alongside the installers for each beta version.
Floating Licensing
The traditional license model involves acquiring permanent or temporary licenses from Thinkbox Sales, and running the floating license server on your network.
Cloud License Server
The Cloud License Server (CLS) is hosted in your Thinkbox Customer Portal, and the Deadline Slaves connect to it via a URL, which means they must have access to the internet.
There are many benefits to using the CLS, including:
- You do not need any additional services running on your local network in order to use UBL.
- Any render time purchased from the Thinkbox Store can be automatically mapped to your CLS, which means your Slaves can start using that render time without any manual steps.
- By associating all UBL render time with a single CLS, you can share it across on-premise, remote office and cloud-based Slaves in various regions.
However, if giving all Slave machines access to the internet isn’t an option for security reasons, there are a couple of alternatives which are described below.
Cloud License Server with Proxy
When using Usage Based Licensing (UBL) with a Cloud License Server (CLS), it is normally required that all Deadline Slave machines have access to the internet. However, this is not always possible due to security reasons. One alternative is to set up a CLS proxy on a machine that does have internet access, and have the Deadline Slaves point to it instead. The other alternative is to use the UBL Local License Server.
Our documentation will go through the steps of installing and configuring a CLS proxy using HAProxy on an Ubuntu 14.04 machine. Note that this can be a physical or virtual machine. While there are probably many ways to set up a CLS proxy, this is the solution we have tested and we can confirm it works.
Local License Server
If using a Cloud License Server (CLS) or CLS Proxy is not possible, there is still the option to use the UBL Local License Server (LLS). The LLS is a local application that you install and run on your local network, and unlike the CLS Proxy, it is a direct replacement for the CLS. In other words, the LLS is responsible for managing your render time entitlements, and is not simply redirecting your Deadline Slaves to a license server in the cloud. It periodically syncs with your Customer Portal to pull down entitlements and send usage data back up.
The LLS can be downloaded from here (note that it is only available for Windows and Linux):
thinkboxsoftware.box.com/s/b1ch … oir11wk4dv
One benefit of using the LLS is that the syncing process can optionally be done offline, so neither your Deadline Slaves nor LLS need access to the internet. The data required for an offline sync can even be transferred to and from your LLS machine using a thumb drive. So if you ever need to use UBL while on a submarine in the middle of the ocean, you’re all set! 
UBL in a Hybrid Render Farm
A typical hybrid render farm can consist of both local on-premise and cloud render nodes. If you are using UBL with this configuration, it’s likely that you’ll want to share your pool of render time across all render nodes. If both sets of render nodes have access to the internet, then it’s easy to share the pool of render time by having both sets of nodes connect to the same Cloud License Server.
However, if security requirements prevent you from giving your local render nodes access to the internet, you can consider using a Cloud License Server Proxy on your local network. This assumes that the Cloud License Serve Proxy machine can have access to the internet.
If you prefer to use the Local License Server in your local network, it’s important to note that entitlements for render time CANNOT be shared between a Cloud License Server and a Local License Server. For example, if you have one entitlement for 24 hours, you can only map it to one of your servers. If you purchase two separate 12 hour entitlements and assign one to each server, you’re still not sharing the entitlement because if one server runs out of time, it can’t be pulled from the other server. To work around this limitation, you could have a VPN connection between your local network and the cloud network, and have your cloud render nodes connect to your Local License Server.
