What effect does a hostname change have on the Flexera Inventory Agent

[pm6dwnoc]

Hello all,

A colleague of mine asked what effect (if any) a hostname change would have on the Flexera Inventory Agent? Will the agent continue to upload inventory as expected and just report a different hostname? Or is there an action that needs to take place on the system after the hostname change (i.e. reinstall the agent) to ensure it is operating correctly?

Many thanks! 

[tjohnson1]

The agent should keep working without any intervention

[jevans · Accepted solution]

Hi PM6,

I'd agree with Tim here.
The Inventory from the Agent is identified by a unique identifier - an AgentID - in the inventory file, which is dependent on several underlying hardware values.

If the hostname changes, I wouldn't expect this unique value to. Any incoming inventory should therefore be merged with older Inventory data.

I hope that helps!
Best regards,
Jack

[pm6dwnoc]

Thank you @tjohnson1 and @jevans . One additional question, since the agent uses the AgentID as a unique identifier, what would need to happen if a VM was cloned and the hostname/IP address changed? That cloned system would have the same AgentID as another system. Is there some specific value I would need to change on the VM to get the AgentID to regenerate? 

[JohnSorensenDK]

@pm6dwnoc 

You should delete the AgentUniqueID the the cloned VM prior to executing the inventory agent.

For Windows it's placed in registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\AgentUniqueID

For Linux it's placed in config.ini under [ManageSoft\AgentUniqueID]

Thanks,

[pm6dwnoc]

Thank you, @JohnSorensenDK!

[durgeshsingh]

We have found in Suse 11 version that after hostname change , Agent has been treated as a new device & it has removed all history.

[JohnSorensenDK]

@durgeshsingh 

If you believe that the matcher rules outlined in Common: Identifying Related Inventory aren't being followed for the Suse 11 device then I would recommend you to contact Flexera Support.

Thanks,

[durgeshsingh]

This is not specific to suse. We have seen All OS. Windows, Redhat, Suse.

[mfranz]

There is already a thread in the forum, discussing the details of the AgentID generation: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Questions-on-the-FlexNet-inventory-agent-unique-identifier/td-p/137758