Dark Site Local License Server (Network-based licensing)

Many software vendors want to use network-based licensing models, such as concurrent or floating licenses, using our element pools, floating features, and consumption tokens. We support two flexible ways to implement this.

The most straightforward approach is connecting your application to our Zentitle Cloud—a fully multi-tenant, highly available service with low latency worldwide. If you have customers in China, Japan, South America, North America, and beyond, and want to provide an easy-to-adopt, reliable cloud-based licensing service, Zentitle Cloud is perfect.

However, some customers—often large organizations—must work in completely isolated environments. This might be for security reasons (avoiding outside access) or for reliability and sovereignty concerns (eliminating dependencies on external cloud services for daily operations).

For these situations, we provide our local license server, which is deployed as a Docker container that works in any environment. You can delegate a license from Zentitle Cloud to this local license server, which remains locked in that dark LAN environment. Your applications can then connect directly to the local license server.

The beauty of this approach is that the protocol between your application and the local license server is identical to the one used with Zentitle Cloud. This means no additional changes to your application are needed.

This setup enables deployment in any environment with full concurrent license models, including named users, floating features, element pools, and consumption-based models. We track license usage—including high/low water marks and overdraft licenses—along with arbitrary analytics data. This information flows back to the Zentitle Cloud for reporting and billing purposes.

Many software vendors use what's called a floating or concurrent-use license model.

Instead of having individual "node-lock" licenses that are permanently tied to specific machines, floating licenses work differently.

Here's how: Let's say you have three users but a two-seat floating license. This allows any two of those users to access the application simultaneously. The licensing system ensures the two-seat limit is never exceeded. If the third user tries to access the application, they'll be denied and must wait until a seat becomes available.

This model allows companies to maintain a larger pool of potential users while only purchasing enough seats for their peak usage needs.

Network configurations