License server in a virtualized environment

[NXMold]

We are a medium sized shop with a virtualized infrastructure - two VMWare ESX hosts run everything. There will be no physical servers after the creaky old Win2003 mail server is decommissioned shortly (currently used for LUM server). Catia is only used to import and export customer data, all design work is done in other CAD packages. Thus, I only have one seat of Catia shared between 7 users.

The spiteful and closed minded Dassault Systemes does not support a modern server environment. Thus, I am forced to run the license server on a desktop workstation. This is hideously unreliable, obviously, so I need to cluster three to provide some breathing room for crashes, computer rebuilds, etc.

Since the software is merely leased (but how do you explain the huge buy in up front?) why not provide a hosted license server?

NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

 

[JurgenKreisel]

That is Dassault for you, stuck in the stone age. How long have virtual servers been around now.
We ran into the same issue, and had to use an older server that was going to be decommissioned.

What CAD package do you use?
We use NX and have a JT-Catia bi-directional translator that works up to V5-R62013.
The thing I like about it is that all the meta data gets transferred to and from Catia. With STEP or IGES you loose this data.
It is not cheap but the licensing does support virtual servers, and you do not need Catia to do the translation.
The only thing is that drawings are not supported.

Regards
Jurgen Kreisel
Weber Manufacturing Technologies Inc.

 

[NXMold]

We tried quite a few third party options, but ran into so many issues it wasn't funny. Not only do we need to interrogate customer Catia models (layers, tree structure, etc) but also need to make sure the data we create and send back opens flawlessly on managers computers (who have no real Catia knowledge) and presents nicely, good file naming, no missing surfaces, etc.

With several hundred component assemblies, and occasional components with north of 10,000 faces - the third party options are a crap shoot. What works fine one day fails or hiccups another.

Doing full native-to-native translation under the watch of a singe engineer is the premium solution. Being able to view both ends of the translation chain in the native applications is the only fail safe quality control.

I use NX here, but we also use Delcam in some parts of the company. Delcam uses a license server with a USB dongle. It virtualizes nicely without creating risk for 'over-usage'.

NX 8.5.3 MoldWizard