One of the license servers in the pool is designated as the leader—the remainder of the license servers are known as the followers. The leader is the operating server with the highest preference set in the lservrlf file. The licenses tokens always remain with the leader server and are not distributed among other servers in the pool.
Because the leader must communicate with all other redundant license servers, the leader should be in an area of the network with good bandwidth.
The leader synchronizes communication between the license servers in the pool. The leader also makes sure that all the license servers in the pool are using the same version of the redundant license file. If this file is changed on one of the license server computers, after one of the license servers is stopped and restarted, the leader detects the change in the file and automatically updates the rest of the license server computers to the newer version.
What if the Leader Goes Down?
When the leader server goes down then the next follower server (in preference order) becomes the leader of the pool. And all the tokens move to new leader server. However, when the original leader comes up again, it reclaims the leadership from the current leader.
When a License on the Leader Server Expires
When a license on the leader server expires (the end date is reached):
The new license requests will fail and the LS_LICENSE_EXPIRED error will be returned.
The license update requests will be moved to the next (follower) server, however, the LS_INSUFFICIENTUNITS error will be returned. This is because the next server will have zero available tokens.