An exemption reason was set but FNMS does not exclude the exemption configured virtual machine to calculate a PVU sub capacity point if the inventory source is ILMT

[#1]

Summary

An exemption reason was set but FNMS does not exclude the exemption configured virtual machine to calculate a PVU sub capacity point if the inventory source is ILMT

Symptoms

An exemption reason was set but FNMS does not exclude the exemption configured virtual machine to calculate a PVU sub capacity point if the inventory source is ILMT.

Cause

FlexNet Manager Suite always uses an imported points from ILMT even if an exemption reason is configured in FNMS.
This issue is identified as Bug #FNMS-32023 and has been resolved in FNMS 2019 R2.

[alexander_frit]

Since we are facing that issue still in FNMS 2019 R1, is there a timeline for a correction planned?

[ChrisG]

@alexander_frit - I'm a little surprised to see this article describing the behavior here as a "bug". When data is imported from ILMT in to FlexNet, it is actually ILMT that is doing license consumption calculations. As such, it would be expected that stateful data held in FlexNet about computers (such as exemptions, computer statuses, etc.) would not have any impact on license consumption calculations that ILMT does.

If you need to exclude particular computers from consuming PVU licenses, then that would need to be done in ILMT. I'm not familiar enough to ILMT to be able to suggest how to do that though sorry.

[alexander_frit]

@ChrisG Thank you for your fast answer. According to available IBM Practice Guide and System Reference such kind of exemption should work in FNMS.

From System Reference section "Operating Using ILMT:

"You can still apply an exemption to an inventory device in such a license. Naturally, if you did this in FlexNet Manager Suite but not in ILMT, you would produce different totals in the two products: the consumption for the inventory device is still imported from ILMT, but that amount is exempted from the license total in one product and not the other. Best practice [..] is to make  such configuration changes only in ILMT, your chosen source of truth."

I'm going to propose the best practicehint to the license managers to exclude products in ILMT from metric calculation. Afterwards with the next import it should be reflected in FNMS.

If this behaviour is not a bug, it would be good to have an updated description in the FNMS documentations about it.