FNMS Inventory Beacon check

[rkaczmarek]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking actually for one information :

- Is it possible to know wich Beacon (we have a lot of Beacons) make the inventory for a device ? 

To explain : 

- SAAS FNMS

- Few countries

- Few Beacons

- The Device's beacon has been stopped 

- The device appear in inventory result today

- Can't found where i can know wich Beacon get the day inventory for this one

I have check for the moment on GUI FNMS, but can't find , and on SQL, i don't find too.

If anyone have an idea or a solution.

In advance, thank you for your help.

Best regards,

[mfranz · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Out of the box, there is no solution. The current upload design is flexible and FNMS does not care through which Beacon the inventory came.

However, I have heard such requests repeatedly and I believe  there has been a customization somewhere. I cannot tell where it was and how exactly it was realized, but here is the idea:

Add a script to your Beacons, either injecting something into your NDI files or just renaming them (like adding the Beacon name to it). Then add it to the upload task just before the actual upload. You'll need a central place where all the data comes together, like a central Beacon and then try to gather your results there, before everything is uploaded to the cloud. You would be more flexible, if you were on prem.

Best regards,

Markward

[rkaczmarek]

Dear MFranz,

Thank you for answer, and these informations.

I will look that.

Have a good day.

Best regards,

[adrian_ritz1]

Hi,

I did something like this for our customer. To understand how beacon server is working:

Beacon is collecting data from agent in a incoming folder, that folder is uploaded to a central server or a beacon higher in hierarchy according to a scheduled tasks  called upload Flexera logs and inventory. If a inventory file is received by the server, he remains there till next upload,  this tasks is handled by ndupload.exe

What I did I create a simple powershell file, that will do the following:

dir 'C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Inventories'|  select Name, CreationTime | Export-csv 'd:\Temp\your_beacon.csv' -Append

This power shell  script command I put it into the scheduled tasks to run before upload take place.

In this way you will capture all inventory name that are received by that beacon, after that you can script to move the file to a central location and to consolidate it.

[ChrisG]

Another approach to get similar information to @adrian_ritz1's script would be to use a [PowerShell?] script that parsed IIS logs on the beacon to list the NDI files that have been uploaded to the beacon using HTTP "PUT" requests. The hostname of the device an inventory came from is typically included in the NDI filename that is shown in the log.

A benefit of this approach is that it would not require maintenance of a special configuration for the upload scheduled task.

[SMC_CIT_Alex]

Hi,

Best thing is to parse the FNMS Portal IIS log, so you'll be able to have for the whole infra:

- beacon and agents on it

- vmware polling by beacon

- number of agents by beacons

We have done this, so we're able to give details on our beacons and also monitor if a beacon is working fine or not.

You can use either powershell or panda python.

Regards,

Alexandre.

[rkaczmarek]

Hello Alex,

Thank you for these informations.
We can't parse the IIS logs because i can't access on some Beacon (on another country).

Best regards,

[SMC_CIT_Alex]

Hi,

I think you did not understood what I've said.

You don't need to parse the beacon IIS log.

You only need to parse the Flexnet Portal IIS log. To make it clear here is an example of our IIS log from flexnet portal:

2019-09-11 00:00:09 IP_OF_YOUR_FLEXNET_PORTAL PUT /ManageSoftRL/Inventories/system+on+SERVERNAME+at+20190911T015804+(Full).ndi.gz - 443 USERACCOUNT_OF_BEACON IP_OF_THE_BEACON FlexNet+Manager+Platform/12.2+(Windows+x86) - 200 0 0 7389

All the colored, underlined, bold values represent IP or TEXT that provide the informations you'll need.

Just have to parse the log and have a table to get beacon name from the IP_OF_THE_BEACON.

Regards,

Alexandre

[rkaczmarek]

Alex,

Sorry, i did not understood very well.

But, excuse me if i'm again in error, but in SAAS, we can't do that , only if it's on-premise no ?

Best regards,

Ryszard

[rkaczmarek]

Hello ChrisG,

Thanks for this information.

On our side, we can't use IIS logs, because we have some Beacon, and i don't get an access on all of them.

I look to find another way.

Best regards,

[adrian_ritz1]

Hi Markward,

Good idea with renaming the file and put the beacon name in the file name, it's more easy to track. As I work on premise installation, I have configured on app server the option to capture the ndi files.

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Knowledge-Base/How-to-configure-replication-to-collect-a-NDI-file-on-the/ta-p/2060

So it's will be more easy to check the file of the server, and to see which beacon handled that file.

[gtrj0527]

I'm new - How do I write a script for replicating the files, and where do I inject it? Thank you.