Licenses & Nodes

Each running Obsidian scheduler process requires a valid licence. Here are some quick facts:

• When you download Obsidian, it automatically obtains a free licence key, which gives you one free licence for permanent use, and a second licence valid for one year. This lets you run a cluster of two nodes for one year, and you can continue to use a single scheduler instance forever at no charge.
• Running the admin web app without scheduler does not require a licence when used in conjunction with licensed instances.
• All licences are floating, meaning they are not restricted to particular hardware and can be moved around as needed.
• Running scheduler instances must have access to the Internet to lease and verify the licence.
• Every licence key has one or more valid licences associated with it.

Licence Verification

Obsidian requires a a live Internet connection to validate clustered scheduler instances. If you are running a single instance, this check is bypassed.

Obsidian's licence verification is built to handle sporadic outages to Internet connectivity. Customers using paid licences can generally expect grace periods of over 48 hours during which Internet connectivity is not available. Obsidian will automatically attempt to re-validate your licence key on a schedule based on configurable settings which control #Licence Leasing

Obsidian also provides a licence proxy should you wish to restrict Internet access to a single server. Obsidian instances can then be directed to the deployed licence proxy.

As of Obsidian 2.1, Obsidian can also be run under a site licence. When Obsidian is run under a Site licence, no internet connectivity and verification is required and an unlimited number of nodes are permitted within the licensed organization. Contact Carfey Software for further details.

Nodes

Nodes are individual instances of Obsidian scheduler. Nodes can be running standalone, within the admin web app or embedded in an existing jvm application. Nodes typically are deployed one per host, but Obsidian supports multiple nodes per host. Each running host uses the hostname to designate the node running each scheduled instance of a job. Subsequent instances on the same host will suffix an ordinal to the end of the hostname. Optionally, you can provide a System property (see Getting Started) choosing the host designator you wish to use.

No extra work, special configuration or administration is required to add nodes. Simply setup the environment, ensure a node licence is available and start it up. The same holds true for shutting down.

Nodes can be gracefully brought down out of the pool, allowing them to complete any in-process work while no longer claiming and proccessing any subsequently scheduled work. Graceful shutdown in the web embedded scheduler, either in the web admin app or your own web app, requires using the container's shutdown. Starting and stopping a standalone version of the scheduler uses a listener port to support graceful shutdown. See the Getting Started guide for details.

Licence Leasing

When an Obsidian instance is validated, a licence is locked to the leasing node. Other nodes or instances will not be able to use this licence until the lease expires. After the lease time elapses (configured in System tab, or in the key proxy properties file), it is available for other nodes. In the meantime, if the instance goes down and you attempt to start a node in another location, the licence will not be available for lease. If you restart the node in the same location, it will reacquire the same licence.

Your Licence Key

You can find your licence key in the System tab as shown below.

Obsidian will automatically acquire your free single node licence and a second trial clustering node licence which is valid for a year. If you are converting your trial backup node licence to a paid licence or are purchasing additional nodes, you can obtain your licence key from the location show below.