ADDM Replacement to another data source

[sree335]

Hi All,

In our organization, there is a recent change in gathering the ADDM data and there is a plan to replace the ADDM imports with an alternative like Servicenow.

Can someone help here to understand the workflow of ADDM, as i am aware of the ADDM Staging. How does the data come into ADDM_Staging if we have this inventory import configured and in case if we need to replace this data extract with another source what could be the best way?

Thanks in Advance,
Srikanth

[mfranz]

Hi Srikanth,

The ADDM adapter is documented in "FNMSInvAdaptersAndConnectorsReference.pdf" (https://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/fnms2019r1/EN/WebHelp/PDF%20Documents/On-Prem/FNMSInvAdaptersAndConnectorsReference.pdf). From the document you should get a good general understanding of the components of the solution and how they work together.

Spoiler: There should be a staging executable which pulls the data from ADDM and writes it to your staging database. From there, an inventory adapter consumes the data.

To replace a data source, you should think about a few things, for example:

• Do I need to get rid of the old data?
• How can I reliably remove the old data?
• Is there an alternate data source?
• Is the data accessible? Do I need a staging concept?
• Is there a standard adapter for it? Do I need to create my own adapter?
• Does it provide the same data/functionality as my old source? Do I need to extend it?

Best regards,

Markward

[tbesse]

Also make sure the data source you are trying to connect provides the relevant data to support the use cases you want to run in FlexNet Manager. The ServiceNow Discovery tool has some shortcomings, as far as I know, and cannot be deemed a sufficient discovery tool for license optimisation. 

Best regards
Thorsten

[sree335]

Hi Again,

Thanks for the document.

Few key things for the ADDM replacement are:

We are changing the data source for this data from ADDM to Servicenow.

We need the old data too.

Not sure about the Adapters to get from Servicenow!

Need your help in knowing how to remap the old ADDM connection to the new Servicenow to pull the same data and map it to the existing columns in FNMS DB. Be it a excel file or API connect as source!

Thanks in Advance,

Srikanth Mallampati

[kclausen]

Srikanth:

A productized adapter to import ServiceNow discovery/inventory data into FNMS does not exist.  As mentioned earlier in this conversation, ADDM actually provides a richer set of inventory data that FNMS needs to perform license optimization than the current capabilities of ServiceNow Discovery.

You may need to engage with some Professional Services/Consulting to create a custom adapter to import ServiceNow inventory.

You may also find that to augment the ServiceNow Discovery information, you may need to use FlexNet Manager Discovery in some cases.

Kirk