FlexNet Agent Alerts

IronManMK10 asked a question.

August 23, 2022 at 12:45 PM

Good day

Does anyone have a way or a tool that can monitor if FlexNet Agents has stopped and send out alerts as well as sending alerts if there are errors in the installation.log, policy.log and tracker.log.

FlexNet Manager Suite On-Premises

dbeckner
4 years ago
@IronManMK10 There is nothing native to Flexera that will provide that level of detail for the agents. My recommendation would be to develop a PowerShell script to periodically check for the agent's service status and restart it if it is stop. Additionally you could include other functions in the script to check the registry for beacon entries and/or zip up logs and place them in a share drive for you to review.
Expand Post
- ChrisG (Flexera Software)
  4 years ago
  Another way to considering approaching this would be from the "server" side: monitor Last Inventory Date values as tracked in FlexNet Manager Suite/Flexera One ITAM. Any computer record which has an old date but otherwise expected to be active is a candidate for follow-up.
  Monitoring the data that ends up in the system will potentially pick up a wider range of failure modes than just monitoring the operation of the agent itself.
  Expand Post
  - Portal User
    3 years ago
    We are looking for a way to see when the agent last supplied inventory vs just the last inventory date. We pull in assets from Tanium, SCCM, as well as the agent itself. We have noticed that in some cases the agent will stop reporting inventory however since we are seeing the same device via Tanium or SCCM the last inventory date doesn't age, so we don't really have a way to identify agents that need troubleshooting. Are there any reports or views we could leverage to specifically see the last inventory date from just the Flexera Agent?
    Expand Post
    mfeinman
    3 years ago
    What about a query against the InventoryReport table in the FNMSInventory database:
    --Show when computer(s) last reported their inventory
    
    select comp.computerCN, rept.SWDate, rept.HWDate, rept.FilesDate
    
    from FNMSInventory.dbo.Computer comp,
    
    FNMSInventory.dbo.InventoryReport rept
    
    where comp.ComputerID = rept.ComputerID
    
    and Cast(rept.SWDate as Date) = '2022-12-17'
    
    order by SWDate DESC
    The InventoryReport table contains a record of every user and computer that has reported hardware or software inventory through an agent. It details the date and time when the hardware or software tracking was performed. You could modify the above query to look for a particular date (or computer) and if one of those date columns is older than a certain date, you could consider it stale.
    --Mark
    
    Expand Post
    dbeckner
    3 years ago
    I'm going to take inspiration from your query and populate a custom report for this. Good idea!
    Expand Post
    durgeshsingh
    3 years ago
    Hi
    If you are using SCCM to monitor your devices in FNMS then why are you using agent on same devices. Agent is good for data center devices.
    Expand Post
    dbeckner
    3 years ago
    There are many use cases for using multiple inventory sources for devices. SCCM is often deployed to all Windows devices. Tanium is usually deployed to all compute devices. In my experience customers only deploy the FlexNet Agent in specialized use cases such as OracleDB, OracleFMW, and IBM PVU licensing. The agent is also good for end user devices especially when you are tracking Adobe products, client software usage, and other software. It is normal to have many inventory sources reporting on the same device which is why FNM has extensive inventory matching rules to normalize this data.
    Expand Post
  - dbeckner
    3 years ago
    It seems like this exact question is the purpose behind the FlexNet Inventory Agent Status view in the WebUI. It would be helpful if this view had more information, such as, the last time the agent reported inventory and install date.
    
    *EDIT*
    Drilling into how the FlexNet Inventory Agent Status view is populated. I found this query which appears to target only devices that appear in the ImportedComputer view that have the agents deployed to them and is ordered by the latest inventory date.
    
    WITH Installations(ComplianceComputerID, VersionName, ExternalID, InstallDate)AS(SELECT TOP 1 WITH TIESic.ComplianceComputerID,ic.AgentVersion AS VersionName,ic.ExternalID,NULL AS InstallDateFROM dbo.ImportedComputer AS icWHERE ic.InventoryAgent = 'FlexNet Manager Suite'AND ic.AgentVersion IS NOT NULLORDER BY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY ic.ComplianceComputerID ORDER BY ic.InventoryDate DESC)),computer_cte(CCID, ComputerName, InventoryDate, [Platform], OS, ServicePack, IPAddress, FlexNetAgentVersion, InstallDate, CostCenter, CorporateUnit, Location)AS(SELECTcc.ComplianceComputerID,cc.ComputerName,cc.InventoryDate,p.[Platform],cc.OperatingSystem AS [OS],cc.ServicePack,cc.IPAddress,ist.VersionName AS FlexNetAgentVersion,ist.InstallDate,cost.[Path] AS CostCenter,d.[Path] AS CorporateUnit,l.[Path] AS LocationFROM dbo.ComplianceComputerInfo AS cc INNER JOIN Installations AS ist ON ist.ComplianceComputerID = cc.ComplianceComputerIDLEFT OUTER JOIN @OperatingSystemPlatform AS p ON p.OperatingSystem = cc.OperatingSystemLEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.CostCenter AS cost ON cost.GroupExID = cc.CostCenterIDLEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.CorporateUnit AS d ON d.GroupExID = cc.BusinessUnitIDLEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Location as l on l.GroupExID = cc.LocationID WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 'x'FROM dbo.ComplianceComputerActive ccaWHERE cca.ComplianceComputerID = cc.ComplianceComputerID))
    
    I have updated my initial comment above to reflect possible additional columns of interest in that view. It is good to see that this view could be used to prompt investigation into agent issues.
    - Dan
    Expand Post
joshua_neadow
2 years ago
We had the same issue trying to find a good way to determine what agents were down. We are using the following:
In all Inventory add filter for Primary Inventory Source is not Empty. Note our primary inventory is the FNMS Agent. We also get data from SCCM, BMC Remedy, and BMC Discovery.
Export into XLSX the fields Name, Operating System, Domain Name, Status, Primary Inventory Date and Last Inventory Date.
We added fields for FQDN, Days since last Reported, Agent Down, and OS.
For FQDN = NameColumn&"."&DomainNameColumn
Days since Last Reported = Last Inventory Date - Primary Inventory Date
Agent Down = Days Since Last reported >= 5
OS =IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Windows 1", OSColumn)),"Windows Desktop", IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Windows Server", OSColumn)),"Windows Server", IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Red Hat", OSColumn)),"RHEL", IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("AIX", OSColumn)),"AIX", IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Mac", OSColumn)),"MacOS", "Other")))))
This is more for our use for reporting out agents down by general OS Flavor.
From here we filter on Agent Down for True. This gives us the results of the agents we need to work on for that week.
Hope this helps.

Expand Post