Tracking Assets in FNMS - VMs and VM hosts

[rwiltshire]

Hi All,

Is anyone using the Asset module for hardware in FNMS?  If yes, are teams only importing physical servers as assets or virtual machines as well? 

Under System Settings -> Inventory, there are a couple of settings that look great on paper but pose some questions when implementing.

"Link virtual machine to the same asset as VM Host"  implies that we would not need to import our virtual machines as assets. This extends to indicate that there is no way to manage a VM life cycle status individually with this option enabled. 

From the above, how does this work with cloud assets that would not have a defined host?

[erwin_lindemann]

Hi Rob,

You are correct: If you wish to manage VMs as Assets, the checkbox 'Link virtual machine to the same asset as VM host' on the Inventory tab in the FNMS system settings must be unchecked.

This is the best way to manage the life cycle of VMs independently of managing the life cycle of their host(s). It is the recommended setting, and is used by most companies that I have been working with so far.

For cloud assets like VMs hosted at Amazon AWS, the life cycle can be tracked using the standard interface to the cloud provider from a Beacon, too.

For example, the standard interface available for Amazon AWS will provide information on the location, configuration (sizing) and the status of virtual machines on AWS. This information is not available to an agent running on the AWS VM that is collecting hardware and software information. It should allow setting the status of the VM.