Best Practice to capture Usage

[chirag_sharma2]

I got to know from support that usage traking on all devices in the environment is not a best practice. 

As per my knowledge, it is an important part of software harvesting, plese share your thoughts?

[kclausen · Accepted solution]

As opposed to a Windows Desktop or Mac, it does not make any sense to install the Usage Agent on a server (Windows, Linux or UNIX).  Except for some periodic maintenance, all of the applications on a server run in unattended mode as a service/process and start up at boot time and run continuously.  There is no useful Software Usage information to track.  Therefore, the majority of FlexNet Manager customers do not deploy the Usage Agent to their production servers because there is a minimum amount of useful data to be captured, and it is 1 less agent process running on their production servers.

This is opposed to a Windows/Mac Desktop where there is a human operator that is constantly starting up and closing applications, which can be tracked as Software Usage metadata.

[mfranz]

Hi,

Also to consider: Usage tracking might be more useful for some applications than it is for others. Some apps are so basic, you wouldn't consider uninstalling them. Standard software, like an office suite would be an example. In contrast, for "special" applications, that might be used only in some situations, it is usually worth the effort.

While the technical inventory process does not really allow you to make that difference, you can still take this consideration into your processes working with the data.

Best regards,

Markward