Managing licenses

Configure your license or apply a trial key.

Before you begin

You start with HCL Accelerate by installing the Community Edition (CE) or the Standard Edition (SE) Trial. Your edition is determined by the key that you enter during installation. As a reminder, the Current Application Edition field displays your current edition. If you want to continue to use the CE, no additional configuration is required.

To upgrade from the CE to the SE Trial, complete these steps:

  1. On the License Management page, click Request Trial Key. You will receive an email with your trial key.
  2. Click Enter Trial Key, and then enter your key.

After you activate the trial, you can use unlimited concurrent sessions and start using product support. A banner displays the number of days left in the trial. By the end of the 60-day trial, you must apply your license. If you do not acquire a license by the end of the trial, your installation is downgraded to the CE and you only have access to community support. All your data is saved, but your installation is restricted to two concurrent sessions.

Note: If you are using either the CE or SE Trial version, your version should automatically upgrade to the SE version when you connect to the FlexNet Operations / FLEXERA server.

About this task

Apply your license by connecting HCL Accelerate to a Flexnet Operations server.

This procedure should be performed after the completion of these prerequisites to ensure the following:
  • Configuration of the HCL Products and Platforms portal for software entitlements management via the FlexNet Operations license cloud server that interacts with HCL Accelerate.
  • HCL Accelerate has direct internet access to the cloud server.
  • Administrative role access to both the FlexNet Operations server and HCL Accelerate.

To complete license configuration, you will need to generate an RSA private key that HCL Accelerate uses to encrypt communication with the license server. The related public key will have to be uploaded to the FlexNet Operations server and will be used to decrypt requests sent from HCL Accelerate

To apply your SE license, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Log on to the FlexNet Operations server with your configured password and retrieve the License Server ID.
    Ensure a configured device password is created by clicking Action and then selecting Set Password.
  2. Using your preferred method, create an RSA token public and private key pair for the HCL Accelerate FLEXERA integration.
    An example of creating an RSA token public and private key pair is the following:
    1. Generate an RSA private key by running the command: openssl genrsa -out flexera-private.pem 2048
    2. Export an RSA public key by running the command: openssl rsa -in flexera-private.pem -out flexera-public.der -outform DER -pubout
      Note: The file extension for the public key uploaded to the FlexNet Operations / FLEXERA server must be DER to ensure successful connectivity with the server.
  3. Authenticate your machine with FLEXERA.
    Authentication is only performed once.
    1. Download the HCL Common Local License Server applicable to your operating environment from the Download Packages page of the FlexNet Operations / FLEXERA server.
    2. Extract the contents of the zip file to the required location.
    3. Navigate to the <clls_folder>/enterprise folder using your preferred command line terminal application.
    4. According to your operating environment, run the applicable terminal command to upload your public key to the FlexNet Operations / FLEXERA server.
      Operating environment Command
      MacOS/Linux flexnetlsadmin –server https://hclsoftware.compliance.flexnetoperations.com/api/1.0/instances/<LICENSE_SERVER_ID> -authorize admin <DEVICE_PASSWORD> -uploadPublicKey <PUBLIC_RSA_KEY.der>
      Windows flexnetlsadmin.bat –server https://hclsoftware.compliance.flexnetoperations.com/api/1.0/instances/<LICENSE_SERVER_ID> -authorize admin <DEVICE_PASSWORD> -uploadPublicKey <PUBLIC_RSA_KEY.der>
      If the process is successful, you will see messages similar to the following ones:User authentication succeeded. Client public key has been uploaded successfully.
  4. On the HCL Accelerate dashboard, click Settings > License Management > Connect server.
    The License Server Connection pop-up is displayed.
  5. In the License server field, enter the server URL: https://hclsoftware.compliance.flexnetoperations.com/api/1.0/instances/<LICENSE_SERVER_ID>.
  6. In the Private Key field, copy and paste the entire contents of the flexera-private.pem file.
  7. Click Save.

Results

The FLEXERA integration is now configured in HCL Accelerate.

What to do next

To modify, add, or remove license servers, click Edit connection on the License Management page.