A reservation file can be used to reserve seats on a shared license server for specific users or groups.  The reservations can be made by user name, computer name, IP address, or IP subnet and the reserved seats are only ever available to the defined user or group. 

For example, the GIS group at company Alpha may require 7 seats of a 10 seat license always be available.  A reservation file would make 7 seats available only to the defined group and allow the remaining 3 seats to be used by anyone at the company.

Additional information about reservation files can be found in the Sentinel RMS License Administrator's Guide.  A quick summary, tips, and a few examples are provided below.

A reservation file is a text file named lsreserv which defines the license features, group, and number of seats in each reservation. This file can be created manually in a text editor such as Notepad or using the WlsGrMgr.exe utility from Sentinel.

• The file must be place in the installation directory before it can be applied. The installation directory is C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\SafeNet Sentinel\Sentinel RMS License Manager\WinNT by default.
• Both the product and maintenance features must be included in the reservation file to reserve the seats (Surfer and Surfer-Maint for example).
• The "version" value is always "A" for Golden Software's products.
• A user, PC name, or IP address must only exist in one group for each license feature
• Each license feature and group combination is on a separate line in the file.
• The total reserved seats must be less than or equal to the number of seats in the license. You cannot reserve more seats than the license allows.
• The reservation file can include a group where the seat reservation is 0. Users or PCs in this group will be disallowed from using a seat.
• When the seat reservations in the reservation file are equal to the number of seats in the license, only users or PCs that are included in a group will be able to access the software. All other users will receive the Network License Unavailable dialog because there are no unreserved seats to allocate.
• The format for each line in the reservation file is as follows:
  • <feature>,<version>:<groupName>:<seats>:[user $PC ...]
  • i.e. feature name, feature version, group name (can be anything), number of seats reserved for this group, and a space-separated list of user names, PC names (PC names preceded by a $), or IP addresses/subnets.
  • Precede a user name or PC name with ! to exclude them from the software (e.g. !John or !$PC-10).
    Note, excluding a user or PC in a group disallows the user access to reserved AND unreserved seats.
• A maximum of 256 groups, each with up to 1000 members, can be added to the file
• Group/member names cannot exceed 64 characters
• The reservation file does not support Active Directory group names.  Reservations can only be defined by a user name, PC name, or IP address.

Reserving seats for specific users:

The reservation file can reserve seats for specific users or groups of users.

Surfer,A:Group1:1:John
Surfer-Maint,A:Group1:1:John

reserves one Surfer seat for user John.

Graph,A:Group1:2:John Mary $Desktop1
Grapher-Maint,A:Group1:2:John Mary $Desktop1

reserves two Grapher seats for John, Mary, or any user on PC Desktop1.

Reserving seats for a group based on IP information:

The reservation file can also reserve seats for users with a specific IP address or IP subnet.

Surfer,A:Group1:5:172.16.*.*
Surfer-Maint,A:Group1:5:172.16.*.*

reserves 5 Surfer seats for anyone with an IP address beginning with 172.16

Strater,A:Group1:0:172.16.*.*

prevents anyone with an IP address beginning with 172.16 from accessing any Strater seats

Updated: February 2022