In this section:

Overview

Any Parasoft tool connected to License Server can request a license. The license will be granted if a token is available. You can define pairs of regex patterns, however, that match user names and host names/IP addresses and grant or deny access to license tokens based the matches. 

You can filter access based on individual patterns or group one or more patterns and assign a deny or allow action to the group. Alternatively, you can filter access based on membership to groups imported to User Administration from your LDAP server. Using LDAP groups simplifies license access configuration because specifying regex patterns becomes unnecessary.  

Deny and Allow Actions

If the pattern or pattern group is assigned an allow action, only the pattern(s) defined in the group that match username/host pair(s) will be granted licenses. If the pattern or pattern group is assigned a deny action, licenses will be denied to the matching pattern(s); requests from all other machines will be granted. 

Host Name Format

The host name format (name or IP) should match the format specified by the tool sending the license token request. Tools on different platforms use different formats. For example, the same machine can be defined in three different ways: 10.9.1.50, gina, gina.parasoft.com.pl. You can verify the user/host format by checking the Tokens Usage Details or Licenses Usage Details report.

Filtering Access by Pattern

You can define individual patterns from the License Details screen. You can access the License Details page by choosing Manage Licenses from the License Server menu and clicking on a link in the Tool name column.  

Specify the user name and host name in the Filter requests for section click [Deny] or [Allow]. 

When a pattern is configured and the [Allow] action is used, only the machines that are included in the filter will be granted licenses. If the [Deny] action is used, licenses will be denied to machines defined in the filter–requests from all other machines will be granted. You can either filter by user on a specific host or define a pattern to filter by groups of hosts and users. For example, if the deny action is applied to the pattern above, all users on hosts with IP addresses starting with 10.10.4 will be denied license tokens.

Filtering by Group

A group is a collection of username/host patterns. You can create groups that match how dev/test members are segmented and apply filters for more precise control over license access.  

1. Create a pattern group as described in the Creating and Managing Groups section.
2. Open the License Details screen and choose the group name in the Filter requests for section.
   

   The group includes information about patterns and sub-groups matches in parenthesis:

   • p: Indicates the number of licenses that contain the specified user name and host.
   • g: Indicates the number of licenses that contain sub-groups and patterns for the specified user name and host.
3. Click the Deny or Allow button.

Filter actions are accumulative. You can add a pattern to several groups and any allow actions applied grant additional access to the matched users in the pattern. Deny actions, however, supersede allow actions. 

Creating and Managing Groups

You can specify patterns to manually create groups or use groups defined in User Administration. 

Manually Creating Groups 

1. Choose Management > Manage Pattern Groups from the License Server home page to add a new pattern group or edit an existing group.
   

2. Enter a name for the pattern group and click Add. A new empty group is created. The group name appears in the Existing groups section, along with the following codes in parenthesis:

   • p: Indicates the number of licenses that contain the specified user name and host.
   • g: Indicates the number of licenses that contain sub-groups and patterns for the specified user name and host.

3.  Click Edit button next to the name of a new or existing group to edit.
   

4. You can perform the following actions:
   • Enter a user name and host name in the New pattern section and click Add to create a new pattern.
   • Browse for a CSV file containing users and click Import to add a bulk list of users to the group. The CSV file should be formatted as username, hostname with no header, e.g., user1,.* or user2,192.168.1.101.
   • Choose a group from the Group name drop-down menu and click Add to add an existing group.
   • Click Remove in the Existing patterns or Existing groups section to remove an existing pattern or group.

Filtering Access Using Groups Defined in User Administration

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

1. Choose Management > Manage Pattern Groups.
2. Enable the Read groups from User Administration option in the User Groups Provider Connection Settings.
   
3. Specify the URL where User Administration is deployed in the Connection URL field. The URL must include the protocol and port.
4. Specify a user name and password with administrator access in the appropriate fields.  
5. If you want to use the groups defined in your LDAP server that have been imported to User Administration, disable the Skip LDAP Groups option.
6. Click Apply.

Groups in User Administration will appear in the User groups section. You can click [View] to view details about the group.

Filtering by Pattern Group Example

The following example demonstrates creating a group with one pattern and denying the group access to license tokens. 

1. Define a group called Deny Group.
   
2. Edit the group and specify . as the user name and 10.10.4.* as the host name.
   
3. Click Add and define a new pattern using . as the user name and 10.10.5.* as the host name.
4. Use the [Back] links to return to the License details screen. Your group will appear as a filter option.
   
5. Click [Deny] to block all users defined in the group from requesting the license.