Hi Craig,
In many cases this means a combination of license consumption priority settings and allocation of the VMs or Physical machines to the appropriate license. Based on the assumption that most new installations are likely to be to virtual servers and physical environments are likely to be less dynamic I’d take the following approach:
- In each application go to the licenses tab and change the license consumption priority so that devices will always try to consume the Virtual license first (Move the Virtual License to the top). You will need to do this for each version of the application.
- In License Compliance/Apply Allocations and Exemptions, define a list of the installations of the product in question, add a filter for Device Type = Computer
- Allocate all of these to the Physical License (Select all, click allocate, ‘Allocate to an existing license’, choose the Physical License)
- Save the view as a Management View (Button is In the top right hand corner of the view) so that each week/month you can just go back to it without re-applying the filters
The result is that all installations will try to consume the Virtual License except for the allocated Computers which will consume the Physical license. The only issue you may have is if the virtual license runs out and spills into the physical one. You should be able to avoid this by making the Virtual License ‘Subject to True up’ in the Compliance tab of the License. You can refresh the allocations as often as you like by going to the saved view and doing the third step above.
However, it is also possible to restrict licenses to consume only certain groups of devices, such as virtual servers, but this depends on your Virtual Servers being easily identifiable by their model (For example where Model = VMware Virtual Platform or Virtual machine):
This approach uses a Core or Processor Points License Type (Depending on the metric you want to model) and a locally created points ruleset. By defining a points rule which applies only where the Model = X we can apply certain logic to devices with a particular Model in FNMS and we can also restrict licenses to only be consumed by those groups of devices. In your example we would:
- Create both licenses and use the prioritisation as above so that FNMS always tries to use the Virtual license first
- But, create the Virtual license as a core points or Processor points license. If we get creative with the points rulesets we can make this license behave as a device/instance, core or processor license.
The result is that all installations will try to consume the Virtual license but only those with a model of Virtual Machine or VMware Virtual Platform will be able to (In this example). All other installations then consume the Physical license. Again, you may need to tag the Virtual License as Subject to True-up to avoid spillover into the Physical license.
Check the Model of your VMs in question to see if this is a feasible approach for you and, if it is, feel free to get back with some more information about the products and licenses you have and I am happy to help with the points ruleset.
Stewart
