New Features, Enhancements, and Changes
NOTE If you are upgrading from a version of Sentinel LDK that is earlier than 8.3, be sure to review the release notes for all intervening versions. Significant enhancements and changes are introduced in each version of Sentinel LDK. You can download a .zip file that contains all Sentinel LDK release notes.
Release: 8.4
>Support for Active-Active High Availability for Cloud Licensing
>Client Identities Can Now Be Assigned an Expiration Date
>Licensing API Can Now Reserve and Release Executions
>Enhancements and Changes to Sentinel LDK Envelope
>Hardlock.sys has been Removed from the RTE Installer
Support for Active-Active High Availability for Cloud Licensing
Sentinel LDK now supports configuring a vendor-hosted cloud license server for high availability.
Sentinel LDK License Managers in the vendor's data center can be configured to store licenses in a common external trusted license storage (a MySQL database cluster).
You can set up License Managers on two or more active license server machines. A load balancer will distribute license requests between the machines and will maintain access to licenses in case a server becomes unavailable.
For information on setting up high availability for cloud licensing, see the Sentinel LDK High Availability for Cloud Licensing Configuration Guide.
Client Identities Can Now Be Assigned an Expiration Date
You can now set an expiration date for client identities. This enables you to:
>Easily manage trials by providing users with expiring identities that consume the same license. This removes the need to generate a new key and a new license for each trial.
>Manage which users can access a concurrency license and for how long.
Licensing API Can Now Reserve and Release Executions
For Features that are licensed with the Execution Count license type, the application can now reserve a specific number of executions when it logs in to the protection key (using the LoginScope function in Sentinel Licensing API). If any of the reserved executions are not consumed by the application, they are returned to the pool of executions in the license when the application logs out of the protection key.
This ensures that the application has access to enough executions before it starts to use the licensed Feature.
This functionality is only available with SL keys and is only applicable when using C-language function calls. The function requires Run-time Environment 8.41 or later.
Enhancements and Changes to Sentinel LDK Envelope
Sentinel LDK Envelope has been enhanced or modified as follows:
>When an unexpected error occurs during protection of a file, Envelope now displays a message and provides a link that simplified reporting the issue. This should improve the response time for obtaining assistance from Thales to resolve this type of issue.
>The user interface for working with AppOnChip has been improved.
>The WinV3 protection engine now supports the advanced debugger detection feature.
>Envelope for Linux now displays a warning message when the --debug option is used when also selecting --memdump.
>The behavior of Envelope for Linux has been modified for debug and memdump parameters as follows:
Given that the following protection parameters are specified for an Envelope project:
•Debugging is allowed for the protected application. (The debug parameter was specified.)
•Memory dumps are not allowed for the protected application. (The memdump parameter was not specified.)
The behavior of Envelope is as follows:
•Version 8.3 and earlier: Both debugging and memory dumps are not allowed. No message is issued.
•Version 8.4 and later: Both debugging and memory dumps are allowed. A message regarding this situation is issued.
The reason for this behavior is that protection against memory dumps does not work when debugging of the protected application is enabled.
>Sentinel LDK Envelope for Android has been discontinued.
The following Sentinel LDK functionality is no longer supported for native Android applications.
•Sentinel LDK Envelope
•Data file protection
You can continue to use Sentinel Licensing API to protect native Android applications.
If you require a protection solution for Android native libraries, contact Thales customer support.
Hardlock.sys has been Removed from the RTE Installer
The legacy Hardlock driver (hardlock.sys) is no longer installed as part of the Run-time Environment. RTE 8.31 is the last version that supports the legacy Hardlock driver.
The Hardlock driver is required when an application is licensed using a Hardlock parallel port key or a Hardlock USB key with a very old Hardlock library. In these situations, you must install RTE 8.31 or earlier. RTE 8.31 is available from Knowledgebase article KB0025777.
Starting with RTE 8.41, Hardlock LPT keys are no longer supported. Applications that use Hardlock USB keys need to be built with LDK API 6.4 or later. If an older version of the RTE is required, contact Thales customer support.