FlexNet Licensing Overview

The FlexNet licensing system is used to control the total number of CPU Virtual Processors (CPU VPs) that are available to an operating environment.

Informix instances are required to obtain an Informix license for each CPU VP that they wish to run.

A FlexNet License Server needs to be configured to hold a fixed number of Informix licenses. It is then a matter of configuring the onconfig parameter LICENSE_SERVER to point to the FlexNet server device. All instances configured to use this FlexNet server will be able to share CPU VP resources. The ServerDevice will have a fixed number of licenses associated with it, each license equates to a CPU VP that can be claimed by an Informix instance. This allows sharing of licensed resources across all systems in a production environment. Informix licenses are also required for tenant virtual processors.

Note: When Informix server is configured for multitenancy, it is possible to have the session threads run on tenant VPs instead of CPU VPs. The tenant VPs are treated like CPU VPs and licensing is applicable.