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  • Owner: Nicolas Rousseau
  • Owner Email Address: nrousseau@flexera.com
  • Solution Type: Custom Inventory Connector
  • Flexera Product & Version: FNMS 2021+
  • Environment: On Prem and Cloud
  • Development Effort (Days): 2
  • Implementation Effort (Days): 0.1
  • Disclaimer:

SOLUTIONS ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. NEITHER FLEXERA NOR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NONINFRINGEMENT. LICENSEE MAY HAVE OTHER STATUTORY RIGHTS. HOWEVER, TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE DURATION OF STATUTORILY REQUIRED WARRANTIES, IF ANY, WILL BE LIMITED TO THE SHORTER OF (I) THE STATUTORILY REQUIRED PERIOD OR (II) THIRTY (30) DAYS FROM LICENSEE’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE AGREEMENT.

The code is in attached Word document

Goal of the document and audience

 

This document gives the details for collecting data from Nutanix or Red Hat RHEV cluster and integrating the data into FNMS / Flexera One ITAM

  • Create or update clusters
  • Create or update Hosts
  • Link VMs to Hosts and Host to clusters

The integration also creates Virtual Machines that would not be inventoried but assumes the full inventory is coming from an inventory tool (FNMS agent, SCCM) that include applications inventory. This creation is native in the Spreadsheet adapter design, you can choose to ignore the VMs that have no detailed inventory…

The approach is to read the data in the Cluster Management source (Nutanix Prims / Cluster REST APIs or RHEV mySQL database) and generate the files (Cluster.csv, Compuiter.csv, used as a pivot format) that will be located in the folder that a specific Inventory Spreadsheet Adapter, created from the Beacon UI will read.

The solution works for both on premise and cloud instances.

The spreadsheet adapter expects each column of the templates to exist in the file that will be consumed, but does not require all files of the templates (file evidence, installer evidences etc.) to be present. This, the two integrations below provide the minimum number of files (computers and clusters) but all the columns (very often empty) in the spreadsheet. Note that these are the 2021R1 templates and that an implementation in a future version of FNMS may require to re-align the queries selections with the current template.

To be noted the ComputerID or HostComputerID can be stings in ImportedComputer. The UUID for the sources have been used in these two integrations, in the absence on database ID (integer or bingint).

The read operation will be typically scheduled (from the Windows Scheduler) once a day at 3:00 PM, the Beacon Spreadsheet adapter will be scheduled at 5:00 PM (before the Inventory import and reconcile task that runs once a day typically at 10:00 PM or 00:00.

Prerequisites

There are prerequisites that need to be applied in the two integrations

  • The read operations require the right levels of credentials in the source applications (MySQL db or Nutanix Prism / Nutanix clusters).
  • For Nutanix, the user running the PowerShell must have the rights to query the Prism AND the clusters.
  • The ports between the beacons that will host the PowerShell script and the Spreadsheet inventory adapter and the data sources need to be opened

There are ways to encrypt password in PowerShell, please refer to a PowerShell expert to do this.

 

Detailed code and steps

  • Each reader will need to be executed from a PowerShell (RHEV to be finalized), in the context of a user with the rights on the data sources
    • Nutanix PowerShell Sample (code is in attached Word document)
    • SQL Query For RHEV (PowerShell to be finalized) (code is in attached Word document)
  • The output computer.csv and cluster.csv files are specified in the PowerShell scripts: for instance: C:/Flexera/Integrations/Nutanix/Data
  • You need to create a Spreadsheet Adapter for each integration on the Beacon UI

Nutanix1.png

  • Format: csv coma separated with headers. Make sure the Connection folder is the output file folder for the PowerShell script.

Nutanix2.png

  • Schedule the PowerShell scripts (Daily if you want to have refreshed movements of VMs in Hosts (can be useful for the 90 peak in Windows Server License consumption) with the Windows Task scheduler
  • Schedule the Beacon Spreadsheet adapters with the Beacon scheduler

 

 

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Comments
sasikumar_r
By
Level 7

Hi @nrousseau1 ,

Great work, Nice to see that we have something now for to inventory Nutanix environment. Just one question. Is this Flexera officially supporting script i.e. incase if we have any issue with script while extracting the inventory from Nutanix can we raise a case with Flexera support for the assistance? or is it just out of the box adapter which needs to be used at our own risk?

Regards

Sasi

kclausen
By
Flexera Alumni

@sasikumar_r - Please refer to the Disclaimer at the top of this article.

  • Disclaimer:

SOLUTIONS ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. NEITHER FLEXERA NOR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NONINFRINGEMENT. LICENSEE MAY HAVE OTHER STATUTORY RIGHTS. HOWEVER, TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE DURATION OF STATUTORILY REQUIRED WARRANTIES, IF ANY, WILL BE LIMITED TO THE SHORTER OF (I) THE STATUTORILY REQUIRED PERIOD OR (II) THIRTY (30) DAYS FROM LICENSEE’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE AGREEMENT.

sasikumar_r
By
Level 7

Thank you @kclausen - missed to check the disclaimer.

nrousseau1
By Level 10 Champion
Level 10 Champion

Hello @sasikumar_r ,

Thanks for the feedback.

If you have questions or issues, you can answer to this post... or contact me nrousseau@flexera.com.

That's said, the biggest issues I have seen with customers can hardly be addressed by me: the level of rights of the user running the PowerShell query on the Prism AND the clusters is critical and access right issues can be painful. I would say the Nutanix admins will probably be in their comfort zone here.

The second issue that could happen is that depending on the version of FNMS you are using, the Spreadsheet template may have more columns. In that case, a very explicit error about a missing column in the template will be visible and you can re-align the PowerShel query by adding an other

"MissingNewFieldInSpreadsheetAdapter" = "" 

I hope it helps!

Nicolas

sasikumar_r
By
Level 7

Hi @nrousseau1 ,

Thank you so much for your response!

Sure, we will try the script (keeping those 2 points in mind) and will reach out to you in this page if incase of any issues.

Regards

Sasi

 

 

WStephans
By
Level 6

Are there still plans to make this a "formal" adapter that is supported by Flexera?

dmathias
By
Level 7

Thank you.  I had asked for this maybe 2 or 3 years ago.  The customer I supported then, of course, moved on from Nutanix; but it's good to see the development here.

David

ChrisG
By Community Manager Community Manager
Community Manager

There are currently 2 ideas tracked related to Nutanix:

anttimustonen
By
Level 6

Hi, @nrousseau1 we got SSL error when connecting to Nutanix using the script, to find that out I needed to run by disabling try/catch section on row #114. I did not catch shot of the error, but that seemed to be the cause. On the server 1.2 TLS was enforced so it should be OK and the script seems to have 

TrustAllCertsPolicy also. Any clues how to avoid this?
 
BR, Antti
nrousseau1
By Level 10 Champion
Level 10 Champion

Hello Antti,

Sorry to hear that, this is the first time I get this error reported. Not sure if it depends on the level of security set on the Nutanix Prism and maybe a missing public key.

I would open a Nutanix ticket as this is more a "Can't call your Nutanix Prism API" issue than a Flexera one.

Best regards,

 

Nicolas

 

 

 

 

 

anttimustonen
By
Level 6

@nrousseau1 customer eventually upgraded Nutanix Prism as well as the server from old in Win Srv 2012 R2 and the script then worked without any SSL errors.

staudk27
By
Level 3

Is there any chance we might see some attention around a native Flexera-supported solution to this quite popular technology? With the acquisition of Snow Software, which does support a connection with Nutanix Prism, I would hope that the idea #112 from 2020 might have some development. 

nrousseau1
By Level 10 Champion
Level 10 Champion

Hello @staudk27 ,

I will let @janborchers or @VidaS answer to this one. This connector was quite high in the list but not planned.

Product Management team may have more insights on this Nutanix connector planning.

Thanks and best regards!

Nicolas

VidaS
By Level 2 Flexeran
Level 2 Flexeran

Hi all,

Nutanix is on our radar and we are looking to address it soon. We will keep you posted once we have more information on potential timelines.

Kind regards
Vida and PM team

longdinh
By
Level 5

Hi team,

 

How about the RHEV Inventory Connection? Do you have any specific timeline for that? Thank you.

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Last update:
‎Jun 28, 2022 04:14 AM
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