License Management

The Schrödinger Suite installed on a Virtual Cluster needs access to a valid license. This section describes different supported configurations for installing or accessing licenses.

Note

A client system needs to be able to establish network connections on two TCP ports to the license server (ports 27008 and 53000 are the default) for the license check-out to work.

License Server Hosted by the Virtual Cluster

The “frontend” instance of the Virtual Cluster can act as a license server for the Schrödinger Suite installation on the Virtual Cluster and any external installations, e.g., on on-premises computers. The diagram below shows this configuration.

The “frontend” instance of the Virtual Cluster can act as a license server for systems in the Virtual Cluster as well as external systems.

Installation of a license file on the “frontend” instance is as simple as executing the command:

$SCHRODINGER/licadmin INSTALL -k <license-key>

as user with “admin” authorization level (see Authorization Levels) where “” is the license key provided by Schrödinger. The new license file is downloaded and placed in a directory where it is automatically recognized by the license management service (licadmin). After the license file has been installed successfully the commands:

sudo systemctl enable licadmin
sudo systemctl restart licadmin

enable and (re-)start the license server, respectively. To test whether the license check-out works correctly, execute:

$SCHRODINGER/run lictest -d -l MMLIBS -f @frontend

If this command succeeds, the license is available within the whole Virtual Cluster. To access and share the license with any resources external to the cluster, such as on-premises systems, it must be ensured that TCP connections to the “frontend” instance can be established on two ports for the license server and vendor daemons (defaults are 27008 and 53000, respectively). Any corporate firewall needs to be configured to allow outgoing traffic on these ports and, additionally, the security settings for the Virtual Cluster need to be configured to allow incoming traffic on the two ports.

Note

It is recommended to configure the access rules as restrictive as possible, i.e., allow incoming traffic on the license server ports only if it originates from the coporate network.

Access to External Hosted License Servers

The Virtual Cluster can access licenses hosted by external license servers as well. It needs to be ensured that the cluster instances can access the external license server on the two TCP ports as described in the previous section.

Note

If the Virtual Cluster is supposed to access a license server hosted by Schrödinger (e.g., for FEP+ model 2 licenses), the public IP address of the “frontend” instance needs to be whitelisted by Schrödinger. The public IP address of the “frontend” instance can be acquired by executing the command curl ipecho.net/plain on a terminal on any instance of the cluster.

A dummy license file (file extension “.lic”) containing the following two lines:

SERVER <license-server-name-or-ip> ANY 27008
USE_SERVER

needs to be placed in the /opt/schrodinger/licenses directory. The Schrödinger Suite will obtain the information about the external license server from this file and will try to connect. It is recommended to test whether the license checkout works correctly by executing the command:

$SCHRODINGER/run lictest -d -l MMLIBS -f /opt/schrodinger/licenses/<license-file>