Summary

FlexNet Manager Suite can be licensed and installed on a multi-tenant basis for service provider organizations that operate the system to provide services to their customers. This allows a single FlexNet Manager Suite system to hold and isolate data related to multiple unrelated customer organizations in a single set of databases.

This article provides guidelines around several considerations to keep in mind when installing FlexNet Manager Suite in a multi-tenant configuration.

Considerations

1. Most published documentation for FlexNet Manager Suite is targeted at single-tenant installations, and factors applying to multi-tenant installations may not be covered. Know-how to fill in the gaps is generally provided by the Flexera Services team, who should be engaged to assist with any multi-tenant installation and configuration needs.
2. Flexera license key files for multi-tenant installations are different from single-tenant installations. Ensure that you have purchased a multi-tenant license from Flexera to use on a multi-tenant system.
3. SQL Server Enterprise Edition must be used. Standard Edition will not work for multi-tenant installations due to partitioning requirements.
4. Use the database scripts in the FlexNet Manager Suite\Database\Partitioned directory in the FlexNet Manager Suite installer package to install the databases. Database setup scripts in the FlexNet Manager Suite\Database\Normal directory can only be used with single-tenant configurations.
5. The user account that is used to run the Activation Wizard to load a FlexNet Manager Suite license file and create a new tenant is added as the first operator in the tenant. This account should be used to login to the web UI and configure additional operators for the tenant as needed.
6. At least one unique domain user account is required for each tenant for beacons from that tenant to authenticate to the application server. A FlexNet Manager Suite operator account should be created for this user and added to a role for the relevant tenant.
7. Adding an account used for beacon authentication in one tenant to another tenant will cause authentication to fail in both tenants. There is no warning for this, so be careful. If this does happen, use a SQL statement like the following to re-associate the account with the correct tenant:
   EXEC dbo.ComplianceOperatorConvertGlobalOperatorToTenant @OperatorLogin = 'DOMAIN\username', @TenantUID ='TenantUID'.
8. A beacon cannot be installed on the application server in a multi-tenant configuration.
9. Multi-tenant systems are commonly designed to use a multi-server application server, separating out the web, batch and inventory servers onto separate devices for scalability.
10. Database sizing guidelines for multi-tenant systems are generally similar to single-tenant systems.