In this section:

Overview

License Groups simplify the configuration of reservations or filters for a group of users.  Instead of making multiple reservations or filters for each user, you can make a single reservation or filter for all users in a group. There are two types of groups:

• Pattern Groups
• User Administration Groups

Pattern Groups

Pattern groups are collections of regular expressions that are used to identify users, typically by username and host ID or IP address, for the purposes of assigning license tokens. The regular expressions used in your pattern groups can be as specific or general as needed to suit your needs and a pattern group may inherit patterns from other groups in addition to any others created specifically for it.

Creating and Editing Pattern Groups

1. Open the License Server home page.
2. Choose Configuration > License Groups.
   
3. Click Add Pattern Group to add a new group. The Add Pattern Group dialog opens.
   
   
   • If you want to edit an existing group, click its name and skip to step 5.
4. Enter a unique name for this group and click Create. Be aware that the name of the group cannot be changed after it is created.
5. To add one or more patterns to the pattern group:
   1. Click Add Patterns. The Add Pattern to Pattern Group dialog opens.
      
   2. Enter a user pattern and a host pattern as regular expressions. Both are required. See Pattern Group Patterns for details about both pattern types.
   3. To add just this pattern, click Confirm. The dialog will close. If you want to add this pattern and keep the dialog open so you can add another one, click Confirm and Add Another.
6. To inherit patterns from other pattern groups:
   1. Click Add Pattern Groups. The Add Pattern Groups to Pattern Group dialog opens.
      
   2. Select the pattern group or groups you want this group to inherit patterns from. Pay particular attention to any pattern groups that your selections are themselves inheriting; nesting inheritances too deeply is not recommended. See Inherited Pattern Groups for details about inheriting pattern groups.
   3. Click Confirm.
7. To remove a pattern or pattern group, click its associated minus symbol.

Pattern Group Patterns

A pattern is a set of regular expressions, one used to match usernames and the other used to match hostnames or IP addresses. The pattern is applied to a license request and both the username pattern and hostname pattern must match the request for the pattern to be considered a match. When a pattern group is applied to a license filter or license reservation, only one of the patterns needs to match the license request for the license filter or license reservation to be applied to the license request.

Username pattern examples:

• .* – will match any username.
• john.* – will match any username which starts with "john"
• .*smith – will match any username which ends with "smith"
• john\.smith – will match the username which is exactly equal to "john.smith"

Hostname pattern examples:

• .* – will match any hostname or IP address.
• host\..* – will match any hostname which starts with "host." for instance "host.company.com"
• .*\.company\.com – will match any hostname which ends with ".company.com" for instance "host.company.com"
• 10\.1\.\d+\.\d+ – will match any IP address which starts with "10.1" for instance "10.1.40.60"

For more information on pattern matching see the documentation for java.util.regex.Pattern.

Inherited Pattern Groups

Inherited pattern groups are an advanced feature. When inheriting a pattern group, all of the patterns from that group will be used by the new pattern group. This allows for creating hierarchies of pattern groups which can simplify making changes to license filters and license reservations based on organizational requirements. Making changes to a pattern group which is inherited by other pattern groups will automatically cascade to those groups, which means that groups which you intend to have a common set of patterns can be defined and maintained in a single pattern group while applying to other pattern groups that inherit them. While there is no limit to the level of nesting when inheriting pattern groups, other than not allowing circular inheritance, we recommend avoiding deeply nested inheritance hierarchies.

User Administration Groups

You can leverage groups already defined in the User Administration module, rather than of manually creating user groups as described in Creating and Editing Groups. 

1. Open the License Server home page.
2. Choose Configuration > License Groups.
3. Enable the Enable user groups from User Administration option in the User Groups section.