VMWare products reporting ability in FNMS

[ImIronMan]

Hello Team

Could you please advise how FNMS can discover or report consumption of the below listed products:

• vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 Enterprise
• vRealize Automation 7 Enterprise
• vRealize Suite 2018 Advanced(PLU)
• vRealize Suite 2018 Standard(PLU)
• vRealize Suite 7 Standard
• vSAN 6 Enterprise (CPU)
• vSAN 6.2 Advanced (CPU)
• vSphere 6 Enterprise Plus for vCloud Suites

Regards

Rajesh Ponnala

[tbesse]

Hi Rajesh,

I recommend you check out our Best Practice guide on working with FlexNet Manager managing VMware products, you can find it in the Learning Center in the community here:
VMWare Practice Guide

The guide lists what is supported and how to work on VMware positions. 

Best regards
Thorsten

[ImIronMan]

Hi @tbesse 

The page is not available any more.

Can you please attach the doc here

[tbesse]

Hello,

Thanks for letting me know that the link does not work. Please navigate to the guide like this:

• access the Learning Center using the link in the menu here in Community
• Choose FlexNet Manager
• Click on the "Best Practices [...]" tile and review the VMware guide in there

Note the Learning Center is available to current customers and partners.

Best regards
Thorsten

[Jennifer_Munson]

We have the exact same question. We've reviewed the VMware Best practice Guide, and the only mention of these products seems to be on Page 18:

"It also automatically identifies installations of vCenter Site Recovery Manager and VMWare vSAN software (visible in the VMWare Inventory page)."

We have the VMWare PURL installed, however the VMware Inventory page contains only vCenter and vSphere products, despite our environment containing all the products Rajesh listed in his original post.

Is there any additional information on how to detect these products and get them to appear in Flexera so they can be properly counted for compliance purposes?

[JohnSorensenDK]

@Jennifer_Munson 

The functionality included with 2018 R1 to discover VMware vSAN and Site Recovery Manager turned out not to be working correctly and was withdrawn from later versions. It's planned to be redesigned and then included again in a future FNMS version...

Thanks,

[Jennifer_Munson]

Thanks @JohnSorensenDK ! Any idea which future version?

And is there a recommended workaround in the meantime?

[JohnSorensenDK]

@Jennifer_Munson 

This is still being planned by product management, so I cannot provide a specific version where this capability will be re-introduced as of yet.

Thanks,

[Jennifer_Munson]

Perhaps the VMware Best practice Guide document could be updated in the meantime?

[JenniferMunson]

@JohnSorensenDK This is the same Jennifer Munson, now working at a different company but still looking for the same information. 🙂

I don't see any updates to the VMware Practice Guide. Has enhancement for detecting and managing VMware been re-added to the roadmap yet?

Additionally, the Read-Only permissions for VMware no longer work to pull complete license keys; one needs to use a Licensing Administration Role as per the following VMware KB Article (since vCenter Server 6):
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2120255?lang=en_US&queryTerm=licensing+administration+role

[dmathias]

Subscribing to this thread so I can track updates and responses.

Thanks, David Mathias

NTT DATA Services

[mrichardson]

Hi @Jennifer_Munson ,

No decision has been made on the specific version this will be added, the 2 factors that determine this are demand and complexity.

In terms of demand, there are a few customers asking for these however we're currently focusing on items with even greater demand so this one isn't on the cards yet.

In terms of complexity, we did have a team look into what would be involved and found there are some significant technical challenges with implementing these VMWare add-on features and working around these challenges will be very time consuming and we have yet to come up with a viable solution yet and this is the most significant factor impacting why it's not been added back in.

Once we have a viable solution, we will then look at re-adding these but as I can't predict when we'll be able to overcome these I can't give any more concrete timescales at this point but as soon as I have something positive to report, I'll reply back on this thread.

Hope this helps.

[JenniferMunson]

Thanks @mrichardson, I really appreciate the follow-up!

I guess my job is cut out for me... convince all the VMware admins I know to ask for the feature to show that the demand is there; it's just coming from the 
SysAdmin side because SAM analysts throw their hands up when it comes to VMware. Every time I tell a new VMware Admin that the tool can gather License Keys from the SDK but only for vSphere and vCenter Server, they say "But all the license keys are there... why isn't it gathering them all?". And then they go back to using their VMTools output instead.

[dbeckner]

@mrichardson  Is there any update on this? We are getting ready to upgrade from 2018 R2 to 2021 R1 and are hoping this will solve visibility into the other vmware products.

Also is read-only still the require permissions for the service account or do we need the additional permissions @JenniferMunson referenced?

[SyedByhaqiEMT]

Hi Folks, 

Any update on this thread please. We are on FNMS on-prim 2022 R1; and have same issues with VMware. 

Thanks

Syed

[dmathias]

Hey Syed.  Did you accidentally mark the item as solved?  I was under the impression you were just asking for status updates.

Best, David

[SyedByhaqiEMT]

Greetings David ! Thank you for noticing this. Yes! I can see my post being highlighted as a solution; however, my intention was just to check the status.

Best  regards, Syed 

[JohnSorensenDK]

@SyedByhaqiEMT 

I've deregistered it from being the solution to this thread. I will also notify product management and request an update for you.

Thanks,

[WStephans]

Any update on this topic?

[JohnSorensenDK]

@WStephans 

I have checked its status with the product management team, and it's currently in the backlog.

Thanks,