License reservation is done using the Options File, where the license administrator specifies that one or more licenses are to be reserved for a specific user or group. Reserving a license is a significant action and should not be done without weighing the consequences. By changing a license to “reserved”, the license administrator takes an expensive, floating-license and converts it to a less expensive, node-locked license. Reserving a license prevents access to anyone but the designated user(s).
Because of this, license reservations should be considered thoroughly. Each minute that a reserved, node-locked license is not in use is a minute where the same license could have been used by someone else as a floating-license.As you can see, a reserved license is shown by FLEXlm as in use regardless if it’s actually used or not. When a reserved license is in use, its allocation will not change, but the license manager output does. When the user session has ended, the license will be shown as reserved again in the report. The license will continue to be allocated for that specific user only. Licenses can be reserved per user, group, host, host-group, IP, display or project. Details about group or host-group members exist only in the Options File. Group details do not appear in the license output.
A reserved license is considered fully utilized (100%) when the user or group consumes the license all of the time and no records of reserved sessions are shown in the system. The more reserved sessions there are, the higher the probability that the reserved license is allocated but not actually consumed (utilized).
A more accurate picture of license allocation can be achieved using the License Usage report while adding the created reserved user to the Users filter. If the report shows constant usage higher than 1, the license administrator can decrease the number of reserved licenses for that entity and thereby free up licenses for the benefit of all other users.
Additionally, there is an “Exclude Unconsumed Reservations” checkbox. This means that the report can be viewed in both ways: if it is unchecked it will display the total number of consumed licenses + all reserved licenses (regardless if they’re in use or not). If checked, the report will include the total number of all consumed licenses but exclude reserved licenses that are not in use.