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Entitlement checking in the My HCLSoftware delivery portal

The My HCLSoftware portal (MHS) is available for the distribution of HCLSoftware products. In MHS, you can find and download the latest HCLSoftware product releases and supported older releases. This topic provides information on how you can check your entitlements in the MHS delivery portal.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following elements before configuring the HCL Digital Experience (DX) Compose V9.5 entitlements to be deployed on supported Kubernetes platforms using the MHS delivery portal for entitlement checking:

  • An MHS account and access to the MHS portal.
  • A valid HCL DX Compose (Tier 1 – 7) offering part purchased and issued by the HCL Software licensing team.
  • Your DX Compose (Tier 1 – 7) entitlements are mapped to your MHS portal instances.
  • A plan to deploy or update to HCL DX Compose Container Update CF227 or to a later release, if you are currently using a prior version.
  • An instance deployment. To create an instance deployment, refer to the steps in Creating an MHS deployment instance in the MHS portal.

In addition to these elements, review the architecture that presents the License Manager component of the HCL DX Compose software.

Architecture

The License Manager component communicates with the MHS entitlement service. This is to validate license entitlement at set periods for HCL DX Compose Tier 1 – 7 software after configuring the DX Compose deployment through the Helm chart. The License Manager component can also transmit user session consumption from your production HCL DX Compose deployments to the MHS usage reporting services.

Architecture

Follow the configuration steps in Configuring the DX Compose entitlement before you deploy a new or update an existing DX Compose deployment. By completing these steps, you configure the DX Compose Tier 1 – 7 using a Helm chart and enable the License Manager entitlement-checking functions.

Configuring the DX Compose entitlement

HCL DX Compose uses the License Manager to connect with MHS to check license validity and track user sessions. This helps make sure your deployment stays within the allowed usage and provides insights for license management.

  • Entitlement validation: The License Manager periodically validates the active DX entitlement by communicating with MHS. Entitlements are typically valid for 12 months, with a 28-day grace period before expiration. During this grace period, reminder messages are logged within the container to prompt timely renewal.

  • User session reporting: The License Manager regularly transmits user session data to MHS. This reporting allows both customers and HCL to monitor license consumption and ensure usage remains within the bounds of the assigned entitlement tier. The reports also help determine whether a shift to a different usage tier may be necessary based on actual session activity.

Creating an MHS deployment instance

An MHS deployment instance is a registered environment (such as development, test, or production) associated with a customer’s account in the MHS portal. It serves as the target for license metering and entitlement tracking, allowing HCL software entitled offerings (for example, HCL DX Compose) to report usage data such as user sessions. Each deployment instance helps monitor consumption against licensed entitlements. In connected environments, the DX License Manager reports directly to the assigned instance.

Refer to the following steps to create an MHS deployment instance:

  1. Log in to MHS portal.

  2. Go to Deployments tab and click Add Deployment.

  3. In the Add Deployments window, enter the Deployment Name and select the type of the deployment.

    Create Deployment

  4. Click Add Deployment.

Obtaining the deployment key

After creating a deployment, refer to the following steps to get the deployment key:

  1. Go to the Deployments tab and locate your newly created deployment.

  2. Click the three-dot icon on your deployment then select Create Deployment Key to create a deployment key.

    More menu

  3. Copy and save the unique deployment key. This will serve as an initial refresh token.

    Deployment key

Tip

If you lose your deployment key, you can generate a new one. On the Deployments tab, open your deployment and click the three-dot icon. Then, select Replace Deployment Key to generate a new key.

Configuring License Server

To validate the entitlement details for your software, configure the following properties in the Helm chart:

# License Manager Configuration
  licenseManager:
    # Configures if this environment is a production environment.
    # For non production environments sessions are not counted but the license
    # is still validated.
    productionEnvironment: true
    # MHS License Server URI
    licenseServerUri: "https://api.hcltechsw.com"
    # Custom Deployment key secret for MHS deployment instance
    customMhsDeploymentKeySecret: ""
    # Deployment key for MHS deployment instance
    mhsDeploymentKey: ""
  • productionEnvironment: Set to true to send usage reports to MHS. For other environments (for example, test or UAT), set to false.
  • licenseServerUri: Set to the MHS License Server URI (https://api.hcltechsw.com).
  • customMhsDeploymentKeySecret: The name of a secret that has been created and contains the deployment key in a data element called deploymentKey. Use a secret for production environments or in any situation where you prefer not to store the deployment key directly in values.yaml.
  • mhsDeploymentKey: A unique identifier for a specific deployment of DX, against which the usage information for that environment is reported. You can generate a deployment and its associated deployment key for each environment in which you enable License Manager within the MHS portal. Put the deployment key in this value element for non-production environments or in situations where storing the key directly in values.yaml is acceptable.

To create a custom secret, run the following command:

# Sample command for creating a custom secret
kubectl create secret generic <secret-name> --from-literal=deploymentKey=<deploymentKey> --namespace=<namespace>

See the following secret produced by the command:

apiVersion: v1
data:
  deploymentKey: <deploymentKey> # base64 encoded version of <deploymentKey> from the command
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: <secret-name>
  namespace: <namespace>
type: Opaque

Validating the HCL DX Compose deployment entitlement

To validate your entitlement, you must check the logs generated by the License Manager component. The following sample command uses kubectl to fetch the logs from a specific pod within a Kubernetes namespace.

 #Example to get logs:
 kubectl logs pod/dx-deployment-license-manager-0 --namespace=<namespace>

Expected logs

This section shows what a successful entitlement check should look like. The logs should indicate a successful connection to the entitlement server, as illustrated in the following example:

INFO: The connection to the entitlement server is successful. You have a valid HCL Digital Experience Cloud Native 9.5 entitlement. HCL DX Cloud Native 9.5 server starts.
INFO: Starting session count of the license manager
INFO: License validity: true