A product key (also called a license) allows you to operate RTW and RTSHARE either permanently or for a set period of time.
If you are interested in purchasing a permanent product key, please contact rtwsales@vistasource.com
Two methods are available for managing the Vistasource RTW product key:
VSLIC | The Vistasource Online Licensing Tool |
FLEXlm License Server | For those wishing to run their own license server. It can also be installed independently, see Installation |
By default, upon installation of RTW and RTSHARE, VSLIC is used.
VSLIC is an online product key management tool for RTW and RTSHARE.
The Vistasource Online Licensing Tool “vslic” allows easy management of your RTW & RTSHARE licenses by retrieving licenses via an internet connection using a unique identifier, or VSID. A single VSID can be used for multiple machines, simplifying large scale deployment.
After downloading and installing RTW for the first time, the application will attempt to obtain a demo license using the VSID “30DAYDEMO”, which will allow you to run RTW for 30 days. This VSID can only be used once for any machine and version of RTW.
The Vistasource Online Licensing Tool can be accessed in three ways:
The dialog Vistasource Online Licensing Tool opens.
To License RTW and RTSHARE during installation:
To license RTW & RTSHARE after installation:
To verify your licensed comopents:
To view information about the scope and status of your VISD:
VSLIC can make a basic test to check the system and note any missing requirements:
Licenses used under a subscription agreement have an expiration date. The expiration date corresponds to the annual renewal date (plus 1 month grace) of the subscription agreement.
To view this expiration date, click Verify VSID in the Online Licensing Tool. The expiration date appears in the status field.
Upon successful renewal, click Get license in the Online Licensing Tool to activate the new expiration date. Restart Excel, and your license is valid for the duration according to the renewed leasing terms.
A VSID can contain licenses for multiple machines.
If your VSID has an associated maintenance plan, uninstalling RTW or RTSHARE will free the license for use on another machine.
For system adminstrators installing multiple instances of the product with automatic license retrievals, the following two user environment variables can to be set prior to installing RTW
If these environment variables are set, the Online Licensing Tool will automatically generate the appropriate licenses upon installation.
VSLIC is non invasive. The only machine information transmitted online to our license server is the MAC address, Hostname, and Username. We do not sell, trade of otherwise transfer this information to any outside parties.
In case problems arise, please check our troubleshooting section.
The FLEXlm license server allows running a license server either on the same machine as RTW or RTSHARE,
or on a dedicated machine. For more details, see:
After purchasing the desired number of licenses, the Vistasource licensing department at licensing@vistasource.com will issue valid license keys.
In order to create a license key, the licensing department needs the unique MAC Ethernet address of the first Ethernet network interface card of the MS Windows machine, on which you want to install the RTW product.
There are two ways to get this MAC Ethernet Address from your PC:
1. After installing RTW, execute the FLEXlm tool lmtools that is located in the install directory for RTW. Run lmtools to start the program. You will see the dialog box “LMTOOLS by Flexera Software, Inc.”, which contains several tabs. Click on the tab “System Settings”. The MAC Ethernet address is located in the field “Ethernet Address”. Copy the number and forward it to the Vistasource licensing department.
2. If Vistasource RTW is not installed on the machine which will be the license server, you can use a DOS tool to get the MAC Ethernet address for that machine. In a DOS Shell window, run the command “ipconfig/all”. Part of the output is the Physical Address, for instance, “00-02-A5-53-C0-D4”. Next, you need to delete the hyphens between the numbers to convert the physical address in a format that can be used for creating license keys: “0002A553C0D4”
Flexlm's configuration tool LMTools:
1. If you start an engine and you are not licensed you will see the FLEXlm License Finder dialog box with three options:
2. To set up a license client, choose the option “Specify the License Server”. Another dialog box is displayed where you need to enter the Computer Name of the License Server.
3. Click on Finish to complete the procedure. The RTW status window will now display messages about starting the engine.
Set the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE to point to the hostname of the license server machine:
1. Choose Control Panel → System → Advanced system Settings → Environment variables
2. Add the variable LM_LICENSE_FILE and set this to “@hostname” where hostname is the name of the machine running your License Server.