License Statistics lets you track and report software license usage gathered from supported license servers and writes the usage statistics data to a MySQL database. License Statistics can gather both realtime and imported data:
| Gathering Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Realtime | Data and usage statistics gathered from the license server at specified query intervals. Realtime monitoring lets you see historical usage information from the time the license server was added to License Statistics to be monitored. |
| Imported | Data and usage statistics gathered from license server log files. |
In addition to gathering usage statistics, License Statistics lets you generate data for denied user requests (FLEXlm/FlexNet, Reprise License Manager (RLM) or IBM LUM license servers only).
License Statistics runs an embedded http server that handles requests for HTML pages, which contain usage statistics tables and graphs, and makes the pages accessible to view and manage from a web browser. Web pages are automatically generated and updated, so no user interaction is required to generate and maintain the latest statistics.
Usage statistics are time-sensitive; that is, they are updated based on your system clock time. To ensure the time is updated regularly and accurately across the machines, both the license server and License Statistics server should use NTP (Network Time Protocol). Otherwise, the time between the license server and the License Statistics server may be out of sync, which affects statistics.
Before using License Statistics, you must configure it for your site, including specifying the http server port. License Statistics runs as a service on Windows or as a daemon on Linux. Because License Statistics runs as a background process, it will run even when no user is logged into the License Statistics server machine.
Important: License Statistics does not have to be installed on the license server machine to generate consistent usage data, however, it should be installed on a machine that has a stable network connection to the license server. Similarly, if statistics are gathered from a network with heavy loads, you should ensure you do not have frequent network problems. While network problems do not prevent the gathering of usage statistics, they may make the statistics less precise.
For definitions of terms that are specific to License Statistics and feature usage monitoring, see the License Statistics Glossary.