Any workspace which contains a Geodatabase reader/writer requires an ArcGIS license. This is the same for any workspace uploaded to FME Server. Each FME Engine which runs a workspace containing a Geodatabase reader/writer must also have access to an ArcGIS license.

• We also did some testing with ArcGIS Server Enterprise Advance edition license. Below are the results:
  • able to run two jobs both reading (or writing) a Geodatabase dataset.
  • also able to run four jobs, which two of them read and the other two write geodatabase dataset.
  • the test is based on ArcGIS Server Enterprise Advance edition license which does not limit the number of seats.

• Tested a single seat dongle based ArcInfo Floating License (9.3) and any number of FME engines. Seem to be able to use this ESRI license when reading geodatabase. Here are the steps we took:
  • We first proved this was a single seat by starting ArcCatalog and then trying to run FME workspaces on FME Server that use ArcObjects (in this case reading geodatabase). This failed on FME Server as we would expect because the "user" running FME Server was "System" and I was the user running ArcGIS. The license server log reported that there were no license left.
  • Next we closed ArcCatalog and started running the workspaces on FME Server. At this point I was able to run unlimited jobs on FME Server with multiple engines.

Note: The one issue we know of is that once any FME Engine on FME Server checks out an ESRI license that license is not returned until the engine is restarted (PR16046).