MATLAB: Do I receive the error message ‘”Submitting a task from a commercial Parallel Computing Toolbox license and running on a cluster with an educational MATLAB Parallel Server is disallowed…’ when I am using an Academic license

MATLAB Parallel Server

When trying to submit a job using the Parallel Computing Toolbox why do I get the following error message:
"Submitting a task from a commercial Parallel Computing Toolbox license and running on a cluster with an educational MATLAB Parallel Server is disallowed by The MathWorks, Inc Software License Agreement. Please speak with the administrator of your Parallel Computing Toolbox and/or MATLAB Parallel Server"
Or from R2017a onwards:
"Submitting a task from a Parallel Computing Toolbox license with code 300 and running on a cluster with a MATLAB Parallel Server license with code 200 is disallowed by The MathWorks, Inc Software License Agreement. Please speak with the administrator of your Parallel Computing Toolbox and/or MATLAB Parallel Server license(s)."
This is confusing, since all of our licenses are non-commercial Academic licenses.

Best Answer

The issue may occur if the license that MATLAB is using has a higher 'lu' or License Usage value in the license file than the MATLAB Parallel Server license. If you are using an Academic license, updating your license file should resolve the issue. To update your existing license, follow these instructions:
1. Click on the 'Help' dropdown in MATLAB
2. Go to 'Licensing' *and click on '*Update Current Licenses'
3. Select the appropriate license and click on 'Update'
Afterwards, you should be able to submit a job.
NOTE: Starting in R2019a the following name changes occurred:
  • MATLAB Distributed Computing Server was renamed to MATLAB Parallel Server
  • mdce_def was renamed to mjs_def
  • mdce binary was renamed to mjs
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