Tekla Structures on-premises licensing
The information on this page is not valid for online subscriptions.
On-premises licenses are an alternative to the default Tekla Structures online subscription. Whether you use an on-premises license or an online subscription is determined when you purchase a license, so you cannot change between the two distribution methods yourself. You activate on-premises licenses on a license server that you install on your own computer hardware. Tekla Structures installations for one or more users connect to the license server to reserve a license.
On-premises licensing setup follows this general workflow:
- Install Tekla on-premises license server.
- Save your on-premises license entitlement certificate. On-premises licenses are delivered in the form of an entitlement certificate that is sent via e-mail.
- Activate your on-premises licenses.
- Connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server.
On-premises licensing technology
With on-premises licensing, Tekla Structures uses FlexNet (FlexNet Publisher License Management) licensing system by Flexera Software. We provide our own Tekla-specific tools for managing the licenses on top of the common FlexNet platform, replacing some of the standard tools you may have encountered when using other software products that use FlexNet for licensing.
The license server software is compatible with several versions of Tekla Structures. To see which license server version to use with your current Tekla Structures version, see Hardware recommendations for Tekla license server. The licenses are also compatible with older versions of Tekla Structures in addition to the highest allowed version stated in the license. The license is sent to you attached in an email as an entitlement certificate HTML file.
Note:
Keep backup copies of your license entitlements in a safe place.
Local licensing on your workstation
If there are few users in your organization and you do not need to share the same licenses between users, you will install a license server directly on the Tekla Structures workstation. When you activate a license on the local license server, Tekla Structures always uses that license and you can also start Tekla Structures offline without borrowing a license. If you want to use this type of setup, see Installation and licensing workflow.
For organizations with many users, it is not optimal to install and manage a license server on each workstation because of the extra work involved, lack of visibility and inability to flexibly share licenses between users. In this situation, it is better to set up a central license server in your internal network.
Note:
When you set up the Tekla licensing system, you may also need to configure the firewall settings to be able to connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server. For more information about configuring the firewall, see Allowing Tekla license server to operate through Windows Firewall.
If you have problems, see Troubleshoot Tekla licensing for more information.
Install Tekla on-premises license server
Install the Tekla on-premises license server.
If you are using other FlexNet licensing services, you need to stop them before you install the Tekla on-premises license server. When you have completed installing the Tekla on-premises license server, you can restart the other licensing services.
To install the on-premises license server:
-
To
download the latest Tekla on-premises license server installation, go to Tekla
Downloads. At the site, click Download for a
guided experience that ensures you have all necessary files.
To check the license server version to use, see Hardware recommendations for Tekla 2020 license server.
Save your on-premises license entitlement certificate
Save your on-premises license entitlement certificate.
As a preliminary action for transferring license rights from Trimble Solutions license activation server to your license server, you need to save the entitlement certificate, which is sent in an e-mail to the person in your organization who has made the license purchase, or to someone named as the contact person.
To save the on-premises license entitlement certificate:
- In your e-mail application, open the e-mail containing the entitlement certificate.
- Download the entitlement certificate file EntitlementCertificate.html to the ..\Tekla\License\Server folder.
The entitlement certificate states the configurations, quantities and activation IDs of your Tekla Structures on-premise licenses. The entitlement certificates are not computer-specific. This means that you can activate licenses from several entitlements on one license server and you can activate licenses from one entitlement (containing several licenses) on several license servers.
Activate on-premises licenses
Activate your Tekla Structures on-premises licenses.
You need to activate the on-premises licenses on the on-premises license server to use Tekla Structures. When you activate the licenses and notify the server, the license rights are transferred from the activation server at Trimble Solutions to the license server. Use Tekla License Administration Tool for activating licenses.
Note:
Do no use the automatic license server notification functionality if you are using some other FlexNet license and license server administration tool, such as FlexNet Manager. To use manual notification, see Activate on-premises licenses using manual server notification.
To activate your on-premises licenses and notify the on-premises license server about license changes:
Next, you need to connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server when you start Tekla Structures for the first time.
Connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server
Connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server.
If you installed the on-premises license server on the same computer with Tekla Structures and successfully activated your license, the license is reserved automatically without any further action. The on-premises license server is always running in the background as a Windows service under the name Tekla Licensing Service.
If the on-premises license server is installed on a different computer, you must tell Tekla Structures the name of the on-premises license server computer in your internal network so that your computer can contact the on-premises license server computer.
To connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server when you start Tekla Structures for the first time:
-
To connect Tekla Structures to the on-premises license server, enter the
port@hostnameinformation in the licensing dialog box, for example27007@HOST_NAME.The host name and port must correspond with the host name and port found in the tekla.lic file on the server computer located at ..\Tekla\License\Server. The license server administrator informs users about the on-premises license server name and port number.
1. host
2. port
If there is more than one license server available with activated licenses, you can define a primary and a secondary server in the licensing dialog box by separating the servers with a semicolon as follows:
27007@HOST_NAME_1;27007@HOST_NAME_2