slaves take multiple licenses!

Deadline
1

Hello,

We are using deadline 4, and haven’t updated yet to deadline 5 due to all kinds of jobs still in deadline 4.
We have major deadlines to reach. We added new machines, and for some reason it seems that they take more then one deadline license.
We restarted the license service, and after a while some of the machines start to take 2,3 licenses again. We discovered even slaves which used 8 licenses (!).

A guess: they’re using a license per core?
A second guess: the repository “could” refer to more then one ip at the same time. We use this storage cluster, with 13 different ip’s, and it’s defined by framestore-1, framestore-2, and so on. Some of those slaves with double or triple licenses, had a bad configuration, and they referred to the repository on “framestore”. This results in one single ip when I ping it. And also on the other machines. I hope this isn’t giving more then one ip back to deadline (but actually it isn’t)… perhaps that could be a reason?
Anyway, I’ve changed immediately their repository to a framestore of which I’m sure it’s fix.
framestore-1,2,3,4…13 are all the same storage, they’re just different connections and different ip’s.
Rebooting the machines afterwards, restarting the service, and so on, seems not to fix the problem, as some slaves start now to take again double licenses? Although, they have a repository now which is a “normal” connection.

Another thing:
Some of those machines are also in a different ip range. We switched them off now, so that they would not disturb the other renders over the weekend,
but still they take licenses when I perform a diagnostic in the lmtools:
Administrator WS050 WS050 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 6301), start Fri 8/5 19:02
Administrator WS101 WS101 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 9201), start Fri 8/5 19:10
Administrator WS102 WS102 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 9101), start Fri 8/5 19:09
Administrator WS103 WS103 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 2901), start Fri 8/5 19:01
Administrator WS104 WS104 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 5001), start Fri 8/5 19:02
Administrator WS104 WS104 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 8901), start Fri 8/5 19:08
Administrator WS105 WS105 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 8501), start Fri 8/5 19:03
Administrator WS105 WS105 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 9001), start Fri 8/5 19:09
AdminUser ws038 ws038 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 4001), start Fri 8/5 19:02
AdminUser ws044 ws044 (v4.10) (server_projects/27000 1001), start Fri 8/5 19:01

see ws104 and ws105

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping ws104
Ping request could not find host ws104. Please check the name and try again.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

but they’re switched off…

Do you have any idea what could be happening?

Thanks in advance,
lieven

2

When are your DHCP leases set to expire? It’s extremely unusual that they would change so often. The only way I can see it is if you have more machines than you have addresses available in your subnet range. If that’s the case, machines would juggle through IP addresses and that might cause what you’re seeing here. In normal operation, machines remember their last IP address and ask the DHCP server if they can still use it. If the server says no, it’ll hand them a different address.

Would you be able to save the output of ipconfig /all from a slave once, and then again once it pulled a second or third license? It should be as easy as the following command (use the command prompt):

ipconfig /all >> %userprofile%/Desktop/IPChanges.txt

That will append the results of ipconfig /all to ‘IPChanges.txt’ on your desktop each time you run that command.
I want to see if the IP changes might be causing it.

3

Hi Edwin,

Indeed, this was the problem, for test purposes it was configured that way.
Now everything seems to be normal. We’ll check it everyday again now for this week.

Thanks for the help,
Lieven

4

Whew, that’s a relief :slight_smile: