An entitlement is a "voucher" for a license(s) that you are entitled to install on any of your machines. An entitlement may be for a new license, or an extension/upgrade/increment to an existing installed license.

Entitlements are transformed into licenses when you log into the licensing system and "redeem" them. When you redeem an entitlement, you bind it to a specific license server machine and you turn it into a license tied to that computer. Also, a license expiry date (if any) is calculated based on the redemption date rather than on the purchase date.

It's something like a movie ticket. The ticket isn't the movie itself (the thing you paid for), but it allows you to go in and watch the movie. In the same way, the entitlement is not a license (you can't run Houdini with it), but it allows you to come and get a license from Side Effects Software.

To redeem a license means trading in an entitlement for an actual license. This is accomplished through the License Administrator, or manually via http://www.sidefx.com/services/licenses/.

After you have redeemed the license (ie. converted your entitlement into a license), the entitlement you had is no longer valid and cannot be used again (because it's been converted into a license), unless you return the license later.

Returning a license means that the installed license will removed from the machine it is installed on and be placed back onto your account as an entitlement. You will then be able to re-redeem the entitlement onto a different machine or the same machine.

The primary reason to return a license back to SideFX is if you need to move a license to a different server.

There is a limit of 10 returns.

A piece of data installed to your License Server that allows you to run a specified number of Houdini products.

A workstation, or node-locked, License is installed to the same computer running the Houdini product. A floating, or network, License is installed to a dedicated license server and the computers that run Houdini products will point to it.

Users sometimes mistake a License for a Token. A license just means that you are allowed to serve/use a certain product. A License contains one or more Tokens, permitting that number of copies of that product to run at the same time on different machines. Workstation licenses always have 1 token.

For example a License of Houdini FX may have 10 tokens, meaning this particular License of Houdini FX may be used on 10 machines simultaneously.

There are several types of licenses:

• Server license
  This allows the machine to serve licenses. This is automatically generated when a Product license is installed for the first time.
  This license begins with the SERVER keystring.
• Product license
  This is the main type of license, which can be for any of the Houdini products. The license includes a token count, IP mask and expiry date, among other things.
  This license begins with the LICENSE keystring.
• Upgrade license
  This upgrades an existing product license to a newer version of Houdini. e.g. upgrade 9.0 to 9.1
  This license begins with the UPGRADE keystring.
• Extension license
  This extends the expiry date of an existing license to another date sometime in the future.
  This license begins with the EXTEND keystring.

The License Administrator is a graphical utility that allows you to check the status of installed licenses, install new licenses, return licenses, point to a different license server, and diagnose licensing problems.

The License Administrator simplifies license installation by sending your server name to SideFX when installing entitlements or returning existing licenses. The graphical License Administrator is the recommended way to manage your licenses.

Please refer to How do I start the License Administrator? to run.

See License Administrator.

A helper service on the user's machine that communicates with the License Server to retrieve licenses. When Houdini starts up on an artist's machine, it connects to hserver running on that machine to ask for a license. hserver then asks the License Server, which may be on a different machine, for a license.

If, for example, a user starts two copies of Houdini FX, only one license will be used by their machine. Hserver acts as a cache, remembering which licenses that machine has checked out and making sure multiple instances of a program will check out only one license.

Only one copy / one version of hserver is ever running at one time on any given machine.

On Windows, this program can be started and stopped in Services as HoudiniServer.

A unique code that identifies a machine to our licensing system. When licenses are created, they are valid only for one server code.

See License Server

(aka sesinetd)

The program that serves licenses. It is responsible for keeping track of how many licenses are available and checked-out.

On Windows, this program can be started and stopped in Services as HoudiniLicenseServer.

If you are unable to run the graphical License Administrator (hkey), you can use sesictrl, which is a command-line version of it. Please refer to How do I Install licenses non-graphicallyl?.

Each license specifies how many copies of a Houdini Product that can be run at the same time. This number is referred to as a "token". For example a license of Houdini FX with a quantity of 20 will allow up to 20 copies to be run at the same time. This license would have 20 tokens (conceptually that there are 20 copies of FX with the same License ID).

Running any number of copies of Houdini FX, Houdini or Houdini Batch on the same machine uses at most one token on that machine.

For example, If your facility had 20 copies of Houdini FX and you opened 2 copies of Houdini FX on your workstation, Houdini would use 1 token out of 20 because you're opening all the FX on your local machine. The facility has 19 tokens left for different clients (different machines).

A floating license is a network license. It may be used on a network so that any client on the network may acquire a token.

The license server has a list of all the floating licenses installed to it and, for each one, whether it is in use. When a user runs Houdini it checks out the license to their computer and the license server marks it as in use. When they close Houdini it checks the license back in and the license server marks it as available. When a different user runs Houdini they might check out the same license, so the license is said to float from computer to computer.

A workstation license may only be used on the machine it is installed on. It cannot be used on a network. Both the server and client components are installed and used on the same machine.