Flexible licensing architecture

摘要

An improved technique involves analyzing a system configuration upon a system boot and sending the configuration to a system configuration database that provides configuration details for enabling features of a software package. Such configuration details take the form of configuration parameters having values that may include, for example, an amount of RAM installed in the system, or the operating system used. The configuration database stores values of these parameters in a persistent store and makes these values available to the system when a software package is launched. At this point, the system accesses the database and obtains the values of the configuration parameters. The system uses these values to determine whether to activate particular features of the software package.

主权项

1. A method of operating a computing device configured to run a particular software product, the software product including a set of features, the method comprising:
upon a boot of the computing device, performing an analysis of a system configuration of the computing device, the analysis producing values of a set of system configuration parameters; storing the values of the set of system configuration parameters in a system configuration database; upon receiving a command to run the particular software product, extracting the values of the system configuration parameters from the system configuration database; and for each feature of the set of features, performing an activation decision operation on that feature based on values of the system configuration parameters, the activation decision operation resulting in one of a decision to activate that feature and not activating that feature;wherein:
the software product supports a storage system, a system configuration parameter of the software product being a platform for the storage system, the platform indicating whether the storage system offers block-level services or a combination of block-level and file-level services for making storage visible over a network; and performing the activation decision operation on that feature based on values of the system configuration parameters includes basing the activation decision on the platform of the storage system.