Add NDI File Replication Functionality to the FlexNet Beacon

[kyle_wolff]

Today, this functionality only exists from the Application server. This feature would be very valuable to enable from the FlexNet Beacon as well. Especially for FlexNet Manager Cloud customers. It would reduce the time and people needing to be involved for many troubleshooting scenarios.

[tbesse]

Hi Kyle,

That's a good suggestion, what exactly would be the use case?

I have heard of scenarios where intercepted on the Beacon server, then duplicated into a separate folder, but I would not know how to configure it (if I remember correctly there is something that IIS supports).

Cheers,

Thorsten

[kyle_wolff]

Hi Thorsten,

Quoting your reply: "I have heard of scenarios where intercepted on the Beacon server, then duplicated into a separate folder, but I would not know how to configure it (if I remember correctly there is something that IIS supports)."

Yes, that is exactly how the Replication feature works on the Application server. Having the Beacon server (configured for IIS) to support this same feature is what i'm suggesting. Or, if there is a way to "retrofit" a Beacon configured for IIS to do this today, i'd love to read a KB on it!

The use case would be for mainly ease of troubleshooting and grabbing logs for support cases. In many environments, those working with the Flexera product do not have the ability to force a scan on a particular system without needing to interact with someone with the rights to do so. I've found in on-premise environments where we have the ability to turn on the data replication from the Application server, I can let it sit for a day and am able to review the files coming in, or provide them to support cases without needing to wait for someone to force a scan for me on a particular device. Having this ability from the Beacon IIS configuration, would allow for the same in Cloud environments. It's a very useful feature to gather a lot of valuable information for troubleshooting without needing to rely on others. It also allows the FNMS system to keep working properly (processing data daily) instead of the current work around of disabling the Scheduled Tasks to send the FlexNet Inventory data from the Beacon to the Application server(s).

[tbesse]

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for your explanation it makes sense. It is correct to say this feature is not yet supported, but we have an enhancement recorded against it (specifically for Cloud Beacons).

Cheers,
Thorsten

[mfranz]

Hi Thorsten, A colleague of mine had another use case: FNMS Cloud. If you cannot access the application server, you'll need replication on the beacon (for data quality analysis etc.) We just solved it by adding a PowerShell (Get-ChildItem | Copy-Item) script to the upload task (1st action). So, just before uploading, it creates a copy to a folder of your choice. To be exact, inventories might still arrive during the local copy process and you may miss them. A multi-folder construct would be needed to avoid this, but for a quick look, it should be enough. Best regards, Markward

[tbesse]

Hi Markward,

That is a great suggestion and also what I had in mind originally! If you could post more details here, that would be great!

Thorsten

[mfranz · Accepted solution]

Here is an example:

Copy-Item "C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Inventories" -Destination "D:\Replication\" -Recurse -Force
Copy-Item "C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Logs" -Destination "D:\Replication\" -Recurse -Force

You could add more lines for other folders, like BeaconStatus etc., or you could copy the whole Incoming folder. The ps1 file can then be added to the existing task.

You may want to create the ps1 file manually on the target system, to avoid script signing issues.

[tbesse]

Thank you, this is really useful!

I will suggest internally that a Knowledge Base article is created for this.

Thorsten