Discovery Studio license server vs Pipeline Pilot server

JS 2021-05-14

If you are a first time user of Discovery Studio getting the program installed and configured can sometimes be a bit daunting. You have downloaded and installed everything but you may not know how to proceed. First, Discovery Studio is made up of 3 pieces (these may be running on the same computer or on different computers):

The Discovery Studio Client
The Discovery Studio Server (also referred to as the Pipeline Pilot Server)
The license server (FlexLm server)

A common misconception is that the Pipeline Pilot server and the license server are the same thing. The license server is run on a specific machine because we provide you with a license file that is specific for that machine. All users at a site will configure their Discovery Studio Clients and Pipeline Pilot servers to communicate with that license server.

In the image to the left, 1. shows a Discovery Studio Client that has not yet been configured to communicate with a license server. That 'Enable Additional Features' message in the lower right corner of the Discovery Studio Client indicates that at present the program is operating as the free Discovery Studio Visualizer. It's fine to use the program like this but it has limited features. Images 2. and 3.above show how to configure licensing on a Windows client.

If the lower right corner of the Discovery Studio Client looks like this:

That doesn't mean that you are not connected to the license server. On the contrary, it means that you ARE! (only if the lower right shows 'Enable Additional Features' are you not connected to a license server). The "Server: " message means that you are not yet connected to a Discovery Studio/Pipeline Pilot server. If you have installed the Pipeline Pilot server locally on the client machine and used the default port numbers then you can click on that spot in the lower right corner and enter localhost:9943. If you have installed Discovery Studio/Pipeline Pilot on a remote computer then you can enter the name and port number of that remote server.

A final important note, by default the license server uses the ports 1715 and 1740 (you will only specify 1715 when connecting via the License Administrator but 1740 is used by the vendor daemon). The Discovery Studio/Pipeline Pilot server by default uses ports 9943 and 9944 (although during installation you can specify different port numbers). All these ports must be open (through any Firewalls) on the Client and Server machines in order for there to be communication between the clients and servers. For further details on this topic please refer to the Discovery Studio Installation Guide which is part of the documentation.zip file available on the Download Platform.