No Alerts for Duplicate Name, Differing Serials

[dmathias]

Hi, since we're on a version of FNMS that is beyond EOESL, we're unclear if this feature exists in future releases.

Inventory alerts to inventories with duplicate serial numbers.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no alert set up for inventory records with the same name but distinct serials.  This is largely an issue for us with cloud instances, but not exclusively.

Was this ever captured as an Idea/Enhancement request and subsequently implemented in releases beyond 2019 R1?

Thanks,

David Mathias

NTT DATA Services

[jevans]

Good afternoon David, I hope you're well?

Overlapping Serials are of course a valid concern in FNMS - amongst other things, it's used for Asset matching, and is a good way to identify a distinct device (although not the only way).
In 2019R2+, we implement Agent ID functionality -- with the intention being that a consistent device record is maintained should the hardware values change.

Back to your actual query - what about the maxDuplicateSerialNo value, discussed here?

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Knowledge-Base/Change-how-FlexNet-Manager-Suite-handles-devices-with-the-same/ta-p/260436

Kind regards and thanks,

Jack

Flexera Support

[dmathias]

Hi @jevans 

Unfortunately, this current contract engagement is about to expire; so we won't get to upgrade beyond our EOESL instance of 2019 R1 before it ends.

To restate, the problem I'm asking about is not inventory with duplicate serial.  It is inventory with the same name but different serials.  Name is the attribute I'm focused on.

Where this is becoming an issue is with cloud inventory.  Instances with the same names, but different serials are spinning up and down during the course of a week.  I will check periodically and I have 5 "Active" instances with the same name in inventory, but differing serial values.

While I can use grouping to "see" multiple inventory records with the same names, it would be easier for me to manage and mark stale instances as Ignored if duplicate named inventories threw an alert flag as well.

Best, David

NTT DATA Services

[ChrisG]

I can't think of any new capability, or logged idea, that would directly identify devices with non-unique names but unique serial numbers. I wonder whether Cognos reporting might be able to do this kind of aggregation...

In terms of managing cloud instances, current FlexNet Manager Suite releases have integrations to cloud providers like Azure and AWS which will gather information that identifies terminated instances and automatically delete the associated inventory device records. For example, see this for AWS connector details: Amazon Connector.