Third Party Licensing

Autodesk products usually work in conjunction with Third-Party add-ons which require additional licensing. These Licensing service(s) have to be located on the customer’s Azure Subscription or On-Premise environment and must be reachable by the Digital Workplace Desktops.

Helpful information for this article: What is Azure Private Link service?

Option 1: Cloud Hosted License Server

Overview:

In this option, Digital Workplace’s Azure subscription will be connected to the customer’s Azure subscription, which is where the third-party license servers will reside.

Only Digital Workplace desktops that have been assigned to the customer or customer-approved connections to the private link service will have permission to access these resources.

Implementation:

Customers will need to set up related infrastructure components such as third-party license servers, a private link service, and a load balancer within their own Azure subscription. Once the customer’s private link service has been set up, we will collaborate with customers engineers to connect the private endpoints of each Digital Workplace environment requiring access to these license servers.

Data Flow:

Digital desktop -> workplace VNet -> private endpoint -> private link service -> load balancer -> third-party license servers

Requirements for this option:

• Collaboration between the customer’s Azure admins and Autodesk’s Digital Workplace engineers.
• Third-party license servers with applications pre-installed and configured with licenses.
• Azure private link service and load balancer (created as part of the private link servicer) to service specific ports
• Permission from Azure to establish connectivity between Digital Workplace’s private endpoint and the customer’s private link service.

Is this the Best Option for me? This option is best if the customer has, or is considering to place, their third-party licensing servers in Azure Cloud.

Option 2: Proxy Server

Overview:

In this option, Digital Workplace’s Azure subscription will be connected to the customer’s Azure subscription, which is where a proxy server will reside. The Proxy server will forward all data from a customer’s Azure subscription to their on-premise third-party license servers over an encrypted/dedicated connection.

Only Digital Workplace desktops that have been assigned to the customer or customer-approved connections to the private link service will have permission to access these resources.

Implementation:

Customers will need to set up related infrastructure components such as the proxy server, a private link service, and a load balancer within their own Azure subscription. Once the customer’s private link service has been set up, we will collaborate with customers engineers to connect the private endpoints of each Digital Workplace environment requiring access to these license servers. The request will then be forwarded from the proxy server to the customer’s on-premise third-party license servers.

Data Flow:

Digital desktop -> workplace VNet -> private endpoint -> private link service -> load balancer -> proxy server -> third-party license servers.

Requirements for this option:

• Collaboration between the customer’s Azure admins and Autodesk’s Digital Workplace engineers.
• On-premise third-party license servers with applications pre-installed and configured with licenses.
• Proxy server in Azure environment
• Azure private link service and load balancer (created as part of the private link servicer) to service specific ports
• Permission from Azure to establish connectivity between Digital Workplace’s private endpoint and the customer’s private link service.
• A secure connection between customer’s Azure subscription and on-premise environment.

Option 3: DMZ License Server

Overview:

In this option, Digital Workplace desktops will be configured to access third-party license servers using a public IP address provided by the customer. The license servers will reside in a publicly accessible secure area accessible from the internet, such as a DMZ.

Implementation:

Customers will host third-party license servers in their DMZ environment or a publicly accessible secure area on the internet as mentioned above. The customer will then set up firewall policies to ensure access to these license servers is only allowed from public IP addresses used by Digital Workplace desktops, which will be provided by Digital Workplace engineers.

The customer will be responsible for providing the public IP addresses for these license servers to Digital Workplace engineers. The customer’s Digital Workplace desktops will be set up to use these public IP addresses when accessing the license servers.

Data Flow:

Digital desktop -> Workplace VNet -> Azure outbound load balancer -> internet -> Third-party license servers

Requirements for this option:

• Collaboration between the customer’s IT engineers and Digital Workplace engineers.
• Third-party license servers with applications pre-installed and configured with licenses.
• Public IP address established for the third-party license servers.
• Firewall policies in place to ensure access to license servers is only allowed from public IP addresses used by Digital Workplace desktops (IP addresses will be provided by Digital Workplace engineers).
• Customer-provided Digital Workplace desktops set up to use dedicated public IP address when accessing the internet.