Module Showcase Licensing: Intended Use of Activation Grants

Module Development
1

For an Ignition redundant Master/Backup pair, what's the recommended approach?

  • One license key with 2 activation grants, or
  • 2 license keys with 1 grant each?

As another example, suppose a customer has 5 redundant Master/Backup pairs. Would the recommended approach be:

  • 1 license key with 10 grants
  • 5 license keys with 2 grants each
  • 10 license keys with 1 grant each

More generally, is an activation grant intended to represent one concurrently activated Gateway?

2

Separate keys. Include backup=1 as a parameter in each module's details for the backup license. So two keys with five grants each, or ten keys with one grant each, or something in between. But pairs of keys for master & backup roles.

More generally, yes.

3

Thanks. A couple follow-up questions on the backup=1 parameter:

Is backup=1 necessary for the backup license, or is it mainly a convention/recommendation?

I don't see anywhere in the current Module Showcase Portal to add module parameters. Does backup=1 have to be added through the REST API?

I've also seen several older posts referring to a downloadable Module Showcase API Tool provided as an Ignition .zip. My Module Showcase welcome email mentions that tool, but the download link appears to be missing.

Is that older tool still available and supported, and does it provide a UI for setting module parameters? Or is the REST API the recommended way to handle parameters that aren't exposed in the current portal?

4

Ignition will enforce this for you if present. If offering a reduced price for redundant backups (like IA does), it prevents applying the license to an independent gateway.

I haven't been using the portal, sorry. I'm surprised it isn't possible.

It is a Vision project and has a lot of broken code. Not surprised that IA isn't promoting it. I've privately rewritten most of it for my own purposes, but it is not in a state I'm willing to share. (Yet.)

5

image
image594×1088 23.9 KB

You should be able to add parameters when you're generating a new license, after you've attached a specific module to the license. I would recommend using the new showcase project, the old Vision one had some kind of thread lock issue appear in later Ignition versions.

6

I'll answer this part:
"Is an activation grant intended to represent one concurrently activated Gateway?"

Grants aren't intended for multiple servers. Licenses are intended for a single server, and our license services are programmed with that expectation. For example, unactivations don't restore additional grants to licenses that already have grants. So, I'd also recommend separate keys for each server.

7

I don't know why, but it wasn't obvious to me that you could expand that to show this.

Thanks!