Need documentation for setting up non- production instance in felxera

[SofiyaPerumal]

Hi Experts,

We are planning to have a non- prod instance for flexera. Please share the documentation for the same and estimated time to complete the activity. As we are planning to upgrade our it to 2022 R1 version, we are going to test the upgrade process with the non- prod environment. We have 3 servers for flexera- application, database and beacon server. Do we need to have 3 test environments for all the servers?

Please suggest solutions and answers for my questions. Thanks in Advance,

Regards,
Sofiya

[cdubs76]

Having a non-prod instance is a great way to do testing and we try to have this configuration at every customer install we do.  As such, we spend a great deal of time doing the engineering for these engagements and creating the documentation to support it, for deliverables and repeatability at each engagement.  Your ask is beyond the typical "i'm seeing this issue...or trying to do this thing".  What you're asking for is typically what we are paid by people to do.  I'm happy to provide your our Business Development team's email to support this ask.  Otherwise...see:

https://docs.flexera.com

[kclausen]

@SofiyaPerumal - To add some additional information:

You would follow the same requirements/instructions to perform the installation of a non-Production instance of FNMS as you would for production.  It is the same media and same set of binaries.

As stated by @cdubs76, it gets very complicated if you want your non-production instance of FNMS to have the same data as exists in your Production instance as your non-production will have its own set of Beacons.

[darren_haehnel]

FWIW, we have a few non-prod implementations of FNMS on premise.  While we do have non-prod beacon's, I would not recommend ever having agents point at those non-prod beacons.  We use a PowerShell script to copy XXX inventory files on some frequency (I chose daily) to the Incoming folder on the non-prod beacon's for processing.  If you wanted full inventory between your prod and non-prod instances, you could copy all of the files.  Of course, there are other inputs to consider (ie: enterprise structure, people, contracts, licenses, etc.) depending on what you feel you need to mimic/replicate into your non-prod environment.

[cdubs76]

You could also have your Non-Prod beacon have a ManageSoft inventory source configured to point to the Production FNMSInventory Database to gather the info on agents that have checked in to the prod environment.