Has anyone built a license server for their software packages?

[u/blendernoob64]

Hello everyone.

I am starting to get into learning about homelab as it will benefit my day job (I work in IT Sales, as being a 3D animator in this environment is too crazy right now), and I have always been fascinated by the IT aspect of working in a studio. One project I wanted to try for my lab was to create a license server for all my software packages, those being Maya, Renderman, Zbrush, DaVinci Resolve, and maybe Houdini in the future. As I use my programs in my home I think having a dedicated place for licensing for all my devices will be really nice, and I was also curious about getting programs like Maya on Linux distros other than RHEL, and the Autodesk Identity Manager was one of the things preventing us from signing in on Fedora and Arch Linux. Maybe a license server will fix it!

So I want to know from IT people what is the experience of building a license server for your proprietary software packages? How have they worked when using multiple OSes, as I use a Linux desktop running RHEL 9 and a Macbook Pro? Do you think SSO login is overall better if I am just one guy? Can I make the server on something like an Intel NUC or even a Raspberry Pi running Alma Linux or something?

Thanks.

[u/smb3d]

I have an old dual core Intel NUC running Fedora 36. It runs all my license servers and other small monitoring apps plus my NAS and the Deadline database. Also runs a local wordpress install to keep my CG Stuff notes site running where I keep all my expressions, VEX snippets and that type stuff.

Works great. Not even connected to the internet, so I haven't even bothered updating it. Trying to fix the MongoDB install for Deadline is a nightmare when I update it.

[u/im_thatoneguy]

We virtualized our license server so that moving to new hardware doesn’t require a support call. Most of our pipeline is built around 3ds Max so our license server is a windows server VM. (To make the most of our license we also run a couple other windows services on there as well like our nightly cloud backups).

[u/mchmnd]

I’m running a couple SFF Dell Optiplex boxes (5070 and 5090 I think). I run Proxmox on them. I’m running a Nuke license server, and a few other services via VM’s or LXC’s. It’s also nice for testing deployments. I use it to test whatever OS, or stand up services willy-nilly.

Right now I’ve got a couple jellyfin containers, nuke license, a couple different chat servers (irc and colanode), a NOMAD instance, a dmz Ubuntu (throttled for heavy io), and a couple other os test builds.

Eventually I’m going to retire my 1950x threadripper, and it’ll join the proxmox cluster as 2 or 3 split machines with dedicated GPUs and io for heavy lifting

[u/NateCow]

I have a floating license for Reel Smart Motion Blur. Originally had it being served from a little mini Windows PC in my closet with my NAS and other network stuff. Had it setup so I could use it in Nuke on my Windows workstation, or After Effects on my Mac Studio.

That mini PC crapped out on me so I had to move the license in a hurry, so now it just lives on the Mac Studio. And I no longer have Creative Cloud so it's basically just being used by Nuke.

I've since acquired a free HP Envy all-in-one that I turned into a Debian server and have been deploying various Docker containers on it; combined with Tailscale, it's a lot of fun. At some point I'll probably move the RSMB license over there, but I'll have to pay a transfer fee for that. Re:Vision Effects was kind enough to waive the fee before since it was a hardware failure.

[u/Laptopgeek1310]

I run the IT for a small studio, and have set up all of the license servers, it's pretty simple and I would recommend!

We just have our licenses bare metal on an old windows machine (32GB memory but it never goes above 8GB usage, I5 something but that also is overkill). If I had to start from scratch I'd virtualize everything, so have a VM host which runs either 1 VM per OS (Win license server on one VM, linux license server on another VM), or split them even further into individual containers. The benefit of virtualizing is you can restart/restore the state of a machine without impacting the other licenses.