A couple of weeks ago on si-community, there was a discussion of Softimage licensing and someone wished there was a graphic that explained Softimage licensing…
A network license includes one Softimage license, and five Batch licenses.
- The Softimage license is the “interactive” license: it allows you to run xsi.exe on one computer.
- The Batch licenses run xsibatch, and are used for command-line rendering on render nodes. One Batch license = one render node.
Each instance of xsi.exe and xsibatch.exe can use up to four satellite computers for satellite rendering.
You can run multiple copies of xsi.exe or xsibatch.exe on the same computer. A license is shared as long as processes are running under the same user account and on the same host (aka computer).
You can run an unlimited number of xsibatch -processing jobs. With xsibatch -processing, you can do anything except render. Typically you use it to run script jobs on scene files.
And finally, you can also use the Softimage license to run xsibatch.
Update: As requested in the comments, here’s six render nodes, each using four satellite computers:
eX-SI 
Nice flow chart 🙂
Reblogged this on Digital Pictures, Inc. and commented:
A graphic of XSI licensing
Thanks Stephen, very much appreciated. Finally some clarity!
I am going to assume all of this is in a “per-object” context… 😀
haha 🙂
Stephen from the si-comm page I think there is one image missing from this graphical rep, .. take the last image, then add each with 4 satellite nodes.
As from the pics (not the text, nor the si-comm page ) it’s sort of implied that satellite only connects to xsi.exe. Other than that a job well done. Thank you.
That’s a lot of satellites 🙂 I updated the post to address your two comments, thanks.
Exactly Stephen, considering if each was a modest 12core system, with one SI lic you have quite a lot of rendering horse power. I think that’s often missed.
Like req’ed before, but this time graphically 🙂 If NDA’s etc allow, it would be interesting to see SA’s configurations displayed like this.