Speaker
N. Hoeimyr
(CERN IT)
Description
The Product Support (PS) group of the IT department at CERN distributes and
supports more than one hundred different software packages, ranging from tools
for computer aided design, field calculations, mathematical and structural
analysis to software development. Most of these tools, which are used on
a variety of Unix and Windows platforms by different user populations, are
commercial packages requiring a licence. The group is also charged with
license negotiations with the software vendors.
Keeping track of large number and variety of licences is no easy task, so in
order to provide a more automated and more efficient service, the PS group has
developed a database system to both track detailed licence configurations
and to monitor the their use. The system is called PSLicmon (PS Licence
Monitor) and is based on an earlier development from the former CE group.
PSLicmon consists of four main components: report generation, data loader,
Oracle product database and a PHP-based Web-interface. The license log
parser/loader is implemented in Perl and loads reports from the different
license managers into the Oracle database. The database contains information
about products, licenses and suppliers and is linked to CERN's human resource
database. The web-interface allows for on the fly generation of statistics
plots as well as data entry and updates. The system also includes an alarm
system for licence expiry.
Thanks to PSLicmon, the support team is able to better match licence
aquisitions with the diverse needs of its user community, and to be in
control of migration and phaseout scenarios between different products
and/or product versions. The tool has proved to be a useful aid when making
decisions regarding product support policy and licence aquisitions, in
particular ensuring the provision of the correct number of often expensive
software licences to match CERN's needs.
Primary authors
A. Thys
(CERN IT)
H. Hansbakk
(CERN IT)
M. Katzarova
(CERN IT)
N. Hoeimyr
(CERN IT)
P. Baehler
(CERN IT)
P. Saiz
(CERN IT)
T. Osborne
(CERN IT)
