The upgrade license type, which applies only to network licenses, resolves issues associated with and is intended to replace additive licenses. Rather than creating a new license pool alongside an exclusive license as additive licenses do, upgrade licenses increase the exclusive license count by a particular number of licenses, while simultaneously being completely transparent to the client. This approach allows for more flexibility in handling license add-ons.
The upgrade license lifetime may be limited by using START and END directives in the same way as for other license types. The license server automatically activates or deactivates upgrade licenses at midnight; however, it is possible to create an upgrade license that does not expire.
You can upgrade a particular exclusive license as many times as necessary, as long as COUNT is within its range. It will sum up all of the license upgrades, allowing for a different expiration date for each upgrade.
There are restrictions on applying an upgrade license to an exclusive license. The upgrade license's lifespan must be within the exclusive license's lifespan, and neither the upgrade nor exclusive license can be unlimited.
An upgrade license can be locked to the license server HostIDs to prevent using the same upgrade license on more than one machine. Duplicated instances of an upgrade license within one license server will be discarded.
Client HostIDs are not supported for upgrade licenses, and LMX_GetLicenseInfo will not report upgrade licenses in network or local paths. These limitations exist because the upgrade licenses are designed to be transparent to the client. However, exclusive licenses report their upgrade license count in both LMX_GetFeatureInfo and LMX_GetLicenseInfo.
License template
To maintain maximum compatibility with the corresponding exclusive license, the settings allowed in the upgrade license template are limited. All of the settings behave the same as for exclusive licenses, except that SHARE is limited to VIRTUAL only.
Some settings, like feature name, COUNT and KEYTYPE, are required by the license generator to create an upgrade license. Optional settings that may be used with upgrade licenses are START, END, SHARE, HOSTID_MATCH_RATE and server HostIDs.
Example
The following license template would result in an upgrade license that increases the feature "f1" license count by one, and is valid from the license server startup to 2030-01-01.
<LICENSEFILE>
<FEATURE NAME="f1">
<SETTING COUNT="1"/>
<SETTING KEYTYPE="UPGRADE"/>
<SETTING END="2030-01-01"/>
</FEATURE>
</LICENSEFILE>