Dheemant asked a question.
how CAL consumption is tracked in Snow for MS products.
What is the source of CAL consumption for Microsoft products.
Does Snow agent capture the CAL consumption from Server as well as End user device?
- ZebigbosI would argue that CAL consumption in general is almost impossible to manage on a pure technical level, independent on what tool you use. For sure you can play around with using what Snow suggest regarding Custom Compare Values, but unless some tool can identify indirect use of servers etc, these numbers will probably not be correct.Expand Post
- DheemantHi Jan, Thanks for your reply, I understand the case regarding identifying indirect use of servers. I guess I wanted to know the snow capability for direct CAL consumption.Expand Post
- ZebigbosIn the case of direct user CAL consumtion, it all depends on the CAL I would believe. If you monitor User CALs, Windows server is probably the 'easiest', but it requires you to list out all the logons on all servers within a given period of time. Snow does not have a standard report for that, but their Services department can probably make one for you (unless you made one yourself in SLM 7). Or, if you're going to ignore indirect use, then you could probably try using Custom Compare Value as Snow suggests in the 6.1.4 chapter named "COMPARE VALUES TAB" in the user guide for the SLM Web User interface (in the Help-section of SLM). They also use this scenario in their training sessions. You will need some means of populating the numbers they ask for though, so your data source need to be able to provide those numbers for you. In our case, we do not handle MS CAL usage in Snow at all, we only register the CAL licenses in SLM to keep track of them. As the number of people using the servers, both directly and indirectly, in many cases is the same number that either is registered in HR (minus anyone that does not access computers or systems whatsoever), or active users in AD (plus anyone that does not have an AD user but still indirect trigger a CAL license), these sources provide us the best estimate for how many user CALs we need. When it comes to device based CALS thats even worse to handle in Snow in my view. I'm sorry, CALs can be a tricky issue and thats probably why Snow haven't implemented a good solution for this yet.Expand Post
- Community Manager (Flexera Software)Hi Dheemant, our i nventory agents have the ability to carry PowerShell scripts. If you can somehow mark (e.g. registry value) CAL computers the agent can pick up that value. We could setup a customizing to count those CALs and measure the usage against your existing licenses. The application metric you would setup as custom compare values, like Jan explained. We could also customize something for user CALs, but it all depends on the correct source data for your CAL consumption. If you already know the consumption and we have a source, we have a nice script that automates the above process. Therefore you might need assistance from your local Services Organization. Please reach out to your Account Manager to get more info. Best regards, AlexExpand Post
