The license management system with the release of Houdini 18 will support a new license configuration called chaining. This configuration allows License Servers (sesinetd) to be chained together. This allows license servers to be broken up based on whatever specification you may have (i.e. license product type).

To setup this configuration list a set of license servers separated by a semi-colon instead of specifying a single sesinetd to connect to. The first sesinetd in the list will try to execute the command (i.e. checkout) if that fails for some reason (cannot connect, command failed, etc.) then the next sesinetd is tried, then the next and so on. Make sure to place the connection list in quotes when specify the list using "hserver -S". For example, hserver -S "sesinetd1;sesinetd2".

To use this configuration you need at least an 18.0 Houdini License Server (hserver). The sesinetd and houdini version do not currently have any requirements for this configuration.

For more information: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini18.5/ref/utils/hserver.html#license-server-chaining

As of Houdini 18.0, customers can now monitor their license usage.

This is a great tool to monitor your peak license usage by product type. In a given interval, the peak usage and optionally the user data can be monitored to a log file. The log may be exported to different representations which then can be used to plan for more license purchases as needs grow.

Enable usage logging

Add the the appropriate options to the sesinetd.options file and restart the license server daemon sesinetd.

The usage log file parser

Houdini 18.0.525 onwards ships with the usage log parser script parsepeakuserlog.py. This script will summarize the log file into a readable format.
The parser is located in $HFS/houdini/python2.7lib. The $HFS variable is the installation location of Houdini.

For example, if $HFS is /opt/hfs18.0 then parsepeakuserlog.py will be located in /opt/hfs18.0/houdini/python2.7libs.

Using the log file parser

Run python parsepeakuserlog.py for how to use the script.

The xlsxwriter is needed if you would like to use the xlsx export type.
For time zones, you need to install the ptyz Python module and use the —time-zone option. It will always show the times in the non-daylight savings time

For more information, refer to Peak Usage Logging

Houdini 18.0 adds http communication support to our licensing products. The biggest advantage this new communication protocol has is that its more resilient to modifications on either end of the communication. Http communication also allows users to query the license server using any language that can execute an http request (i.e. python). Houdini 18.0 License server (sesinted) already fully support http communication so there is no extra setup required for this application. The HoudiniServer (hserver) does not by default use http.

To enable http communication on the client side (hserver) add -C to the command line or add "enableHttp 1" to the HoudiniServers option file.

If you would like a more comprehensive diagnostic output from an 18.0 hserver then run "hserver -f -v". This command uses http to grab as much information as possible from the hserver.

Several new commands were added to sesictrl that use http communication. Run "sesictrl --help" to see a list of all available commands.