Redundant Zoo Servers

No longer supported

Zoo 4.0 was the license manager for Rhino 4, which reached end of life long ago. This article is kept for historical reference. For current LAN Zoo licensing, see the LAN Zoo guide.

Question

I see the latest version of Zoo has a “multiple server” checkbox. The documentation suggests I can have multiple Zoos on a routed network, each serving different clients. Can clients be setup to draw licenses from multiple Zoos? This would be useful if our primary server went down.

Answer

No, clients can only get licenses from a single Zoo server.

Having redundant Zoo servers is on the wish list. For now, all you can really do is install the Zoo on a second server, install the same CD keys on it, and disable the service until needed.

If the primary Zoo server does go down, Rhino will continue to function as long as the user does not close the running session. When the Zoo server comes back up, it will resolve all of the used licenses automatically.

Updating DNS servers or workstation registries to point to an alternate Zoo server is a pain. But, this is the best we can do at this time.