Hi all,
Just recently I've been working on a Windows Server compliance report for a customer. Unfortunately, althought the number of servers was rather low, the different licenses, products, bundles, applications, versions, editions, etc. made it challanging.
Each of our licensing specialists seems to share my experience, all these little stumbling blocks. There is one specific thing, I think, could be improved rather easily and offer quite some added value. Here is an example:
As most of you should know, at this point, FNMS has no reliable way to assign Windows Server Machines to licenses in a mixed Standard & Datacenter setting. At least not out of the box. The usual workarounds include strict device (host) allocation and/or restrictions in combination with manual license priorities (consumption order).
But still then, if you lack entitlements, FNMS will follow the consumption order and may start assigning inventories to your licenses in a seemingly unordered fashion. While this flexibility of FNMS surely is a strength, the result can be hard to read and hard to analyze, especially if you want to understand what you really need to order to fix things.
What could really help me: If I could "lock" a license so that FNMS could not add elements on its own. Basically like a "Node Locked" or "Named User" license, but with the product specific consumption calculation, like a "Microsoft Server/Management Core". Consumption should still actively be calculated to account for changes in Use Rights, newly attached VMs, applications found etc.
In the UI it could be just a checkbox, but I guess in the backend it would be a bit more complicated 🙂
Still, this could change the way, FNMS could be used by customers. Maybe some do not prefer the dynamic approach, at least for some products/license types. This feature open new way how to use FNMS. What do you think?
Best regards,
Markward
