Working With LDAP Servers

Applies to ReadyAPI 3.51, last modified on March 21, 2024
Important Notice for ReadyAPI Customers

ReadyAPI has moved to SmartBear License Management and from October 2023, file-based licensing will be retired. As of September 2023, all licenses issued for your subscription term will be ID-based licenses by default. If you are not currently on ID-based licensing, it's time to migrate immediately. File-based licensing will no longer be supported as of October 2023. This means that technical support requests related to file-based licensing will not be accommodated. If you encounter technical issues that you're unable to resolve, it could lead to service interruption. For customers still in the process of migration, we recommend reaching out to your Account Manager to discuss your migration plan. Alternatively, you can log a support request with our Customer Care Team for assistance.

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To use a ReadyAPI floating license, you need to assign this license to the users you created on the license server. Instead of creating users manually, you can get information on them from the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server that is available to you. This topic explains how you can do this.

Requirements

Support for LDAP was introduced in Protection! Licensing Server ver. 4.9.0. If you have an earlier version, you need to update your Licensing Server application. For information on how to get a newer version, see Installing Protection! Licensing Server.

General information

LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. LDAP servers store information about network users. Protection! Licensing Server can retrieve this information from an LDAP server. After you assign a floating license to a user group with LDAP members, they will be able to get the license when they log in to their computers under their domain accounts.

To make this integration work, you need to set up a connection to your LDAP server and specify the directory the server will use for synchronization. See below.

Note that the Licensing Server does not import LDAP users. That is, it does not create user accounts based on the information it gets from the LDAP server. When a user requests a license, the Licensing Server checks if the user has an account in the LDAP directory. If the check passes, the Licensing Server provides the license to the user.

This means that you can use any LDAP server management tool to manage LDAP members in your network (for example, Active Directory Users and Computers if you use Microsoft Active Directory), and that there is no need to synchronize the changes in the Licensing Server. Users can check out the license right after you add them to the LDAP directory, and they cannot do this once you remove them from the directory.

1. Create an LDAP connection

  1. Start the Management Console of Protection! Licensing Server. In the Management Console, open the License Storage tab:

    Managing ReadyAPI floating licenses: License Storage tab

    Click the image to enlarge it.

  2. From the main menu, select Edit > LDAP Connection:

    Managing ReadyAPI floating licenses: Selecting LDAP Connection
  3. In the subsequent LDAP Connection dialog, specify the URL to your LDAP server and the required credentials:

    Managing ReadyAPI floating licenses: Specifying LDAP connection

    Notes:

    • The Licensing Server supports only basic authentication.

    • By default, the Licensing Server uses port 389. If your LDAP server uses another port, specify the URL in the ldap://address:port format.

  4. Click Test to verify the specified connection.

2. Configure the user group

Now you need to add users from the LDAP directory to some user group on the Licensing Server:

  1. In the Management Console, open the License Storage tab:

    Managing ReadyAPI floating licenses: License Storage tab

    Click the image to enlarge it.

  2. Select Edit > License User Groups from the main menu:

  3. Select the desired group and click Edit.

  4. On the General tab, make sure the Host and IP Address edit boxes are empty:

    Empty General Tab
  5. Open the LDAP Members tab and check the Fetch Members from LDAP Directory option:

    Fetch Members from LDAP Directory
  6. In the DN edit box, specify the name of the directory from which you want to get users:

    LDAP Members tab

    You can click Test to verify the obtained users.

  7. Leave the other settings unchanged and click OK.

You have bound the Licensing Server’s user group to the LDAP directory. Now you need to assign your license to the Licensing Server’s user group.

3. Assign the license to the user group in the license manager

After you bind a user group in the Licensing Server to an LDAP directory, the users that belong to this directory can check out floating licenses from the Licensing Server. However, in order for them to be able to do that, you need to assign your license to the Licensing Server’s user group. You do this in the Licensing Server Management Console. For details, see Assign License to Users.

See Also

Configure License Server 5.x
License Types

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