SCCM integration with FNMS: pros/cons

[Mantautas]

Hello SAM professionals, I would like to ask about FNMS and SCCM integration advantages. We are big enterprise with aprox 14k active servers and 56k active desktops in our environment. Our FNMS is on SaaS. FNMS Agents are deployed both on workstations (Windows/MAC) and servers (Windows/Linux). It is a part of our standard image and our coverage looks good. During implementation project we have both: SCCM integration(Inventory data) and FNMS Agents inventory data feeding system. AppBroker/AppPortal is not used. And, indeed, overlapping inventory is merged for SCCM feed. My question to the community is: what is the value and benefits of keeping SCCM integration? If we turn this data input OFF - are the any risks or disadvantages for data in FNMS ? Thank you, Mantautas Daunys SAM Consultant.

[BradAkers]

Hi @Mantautas,

The major advantage is to ensure we have full coverage. There are many reasons to use the FNMS agent over SCCM such as requirements for server license (IBM, Oracle, SQL Server) and the ability to discover Adobe DC edition. Additionally, the usage data from FNMS is much lighter weight than that of SCCM. 

Due to this customers often use FNMS agents on where the items above are needed or when SCCM cannot cover an item (UNIX or MAC). If you are sure you have 100% coverage of all machines with the FNMS agent there is no need to have the SCCM system connected as well. 

I hope this help. 

Thanks

Brad

[ChrisG]

As @BradAkers says, usage gathering performed by the FlexNet agent is lighter weight than SCCM. However that has pros and cons: one advantage for keeping SCCM in place is that it gathers more comprehensive usage data than the FlexNet agent on its own.

[Mantautas]

Dear Chris, Thank for your view. You wrote that SCCM gathers more comprehensive usage data than FNMS agent on its own? My impression was it is opposite. Can you please give some quick examples on "More comprehensive usage" ? Do you talk about Software metering ? Thanks a lot

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

@Mantautas - The FlexNet agent primarily (*) gathers usage of .exe files which have been installed via a Windows Installer package. On the other hand, I believe SCCM usage gathering through the "recently used applications" Asset Intelligence capability tracks usage of all executables that run interactively regardless of whether they are deployed as part of a Windows Installer package.

(*) It is possible to explicitly configure "manual mapper" and other settings in the registry on client computers to gather usage for additional .exe files, but this requires configuration to be deployed for each file you want to track.

[BradAkers]

Chris is correct that this data can be much more comprehensive however you do need the SCCM admin to enable this. Very commonly I find most environments keep this function turned off. 

[jlvalen]

We imported SCCM to our FNMS on Premise deployment for a number of years, but eventually ran into issues with SCCM collecting file evidence. The team that supports SCCM turned file evidence collection off due to resource consumption which lead us to deploy the FlexNet Agent on all Windows PCs and servers. 

Our original intent in using SCCM was to reduce the number of agents running, but have been happy with the FlexNet Agent since we transitioned. It is required for more and more reasons and we felt it would continue to provide superior inventory collection. One example is the collection of software tags. SCCM did not collect this info and it left us with vague or no edition information from IBM and Adobe, etc.

However, turning off SCCM does impact a number of unexpected things. I would definitely recommend working with Flexera support. It is possible to "turn off" the import which does not purge the SCCM data. Once you remove SCCM  it does purge the data, support docs and engineers can elaborate. Also SCCM does supply user data from Active Directory which impacted us as we eventually removed the SCCM data source.

Good luck, I think you'll be happy with the FlexNet Agent alone if you choose to go that route, just takes a bit of work to complete the transition.

[Woo_Lam]

What you mean " SCCM does supply user data from Active Directory which impacted us"? What  is the impact?