FlexNet Manager Suite On-Premises 2023 R1

[jborchers]

FlexNet Manager Suite On-Premises 2023 R1 is available

We are excited to announce the FlexNet Manager Suite on-premises 2023 R1 release.
This article briefly highlights the new features, enhancements and refers to further documentation. 

Related Links

Features by Release - FlexNet Manager Suite 2023 R1 (on-premises)

FlexNet Inventory Agent Change Log (on-premises)

FlexNet Inventory Beacon Change Log (on-premises)

FlexNet Manager Suite Known Issues - fixed with 2023 R1

FlexNet Manager Suite Online Help

New Features

Item	Description
IBM zSystem - visibility of Linux VMs deployed on IBM zSystem environments and license position for IBM and non IBM products running on zSystem	FlexNet Manager Suite provides visibility of Linux VMs deployed on IBM zSystem environments, allowing you to collect inventory and count licenses for IBM and non IBM products running on zSystem environments (such as Oracle database). After collecting the inventory, installs of software on these zSystem environments will consume correctly from all license types. IBM zSystems architecture, is a mainframe architecture developed and supported by IBM, containing partitioned LPAR environments (similar to AIX) running on physical hardware. The LPAR layer can run a hypervisor (z/VM or zKVM) with the capability of running fully-functional Linux operating systems on zSystem environments as guests, or Linux guests can run directly on the LPAR without a hypervisor. These guests are VMs and perform as if they were completely independent machine environments. zSystem inventory collected by FlexNet Manager Suite will consist of: Linux VMs running on z/VM or z/KVM hypervisors and respective hierarchy Linux VMs running directly on an LPAR and respective hierarchy.
SAM Operations Hub	The SAM Operations Hub is the second SAM Hub to be released for FlexNet Manager Suite and addresses the fundamental question: "Am I performing well in my SAM process?". It does this by surfacing important metric data by means of a KPI Dashboard tool, providing links to detailed reports and laying out a stepped approach along with explanations articulating critical items such as how to fix issues and enhance SAM data quality. Following the steps documented in the SAM Operations Hub will ultimately lead to accurate inventory data that can be trusted. Widgets used List of Reports used in the SAM Operations Hub
Trend data for the SAM Optimization Hub	The SAM Optimization Hub now renders historical trend data in the form of two line charts: Estimated Savings vs. Classical Approach (Trend): Displays, over time and by product, the difference between the "safe but expensive" and the "optimal license" consumption computed by the reports. Save By Taking Action - Top 5 (Trend): Displays the results of your optimization efforts based on how you have optimized your infrastructure to minimize costs and license consumption.
Microsoft Intune Adapter	The new Microsoft Intune Adapter collects inventory from Microsoft Intune and imports it into FlexNet Manager Suite. The data collected gives visibility of managed devices, user data, and managed and unmanaged applications installed on corporate owned Windows devices in your Microsoft Intune estate. FlexNet Manager Suite uses the imported data collected from Microsoft Intune to calculate license consumption.
Tanium Adapter enhanced to support token based authentication for Tanium Cloud	The Tanium adapter now allows you to export inventory data from Tanium Cloud platform and Tanium On-Premises in a more secure way using token based Authentication into FlexNet Manager Suite.
Citrix Cloud - Streamed Applications	The Citrix Cloud adapter, has been enhanced to allow for importing streamed applications and corresponding delivery groups from Citrix Cloud into FlexNet Manager Suite. After a successful import, Citrix virtual application data will be visible in the following areas of FlexNet Manager Suite: Citrix virtual apps installer evidence report, installer evidence, unrecognized evidence and remote devices. FlexNet Manager Suite will process the data for license position. Citrix streamed applications are visible as Installer Evidence with an Access Mode marked as Citrix Virtual App.
AWS Config Adapter	The new AWS Config adapter provides an alternative method for establishing a connection to Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (AWS EC2), and allows you to create an integration to query your AWS resources by means of an AWS aggregator. Compared to previously released AWS connections, this new adapter has less setup steps. To use the AWS Config adapter, AWS Config needs to be enabled on all the relevant AWS accounts that resource data is to be collected from. After a successful data import: EC2 instances, dedicated hosts, Oracle RDS databases and account details with account names will be visible in FlexNet Manager Suite.
Least Privilege Operation Mode for FlexNet Inventory Agent on Unix platforms	Previously, when the FlexNet inventory agent was installed on a UNIX-like system, the entire agent had to run as root and requires full root access. This could cause traceability issues or security issues to some users. From this release, you can choose to install the FlexNet inventory agent into either the Default operation mode (full root access) or Least privilege operation mode.
Support for bundle inventory collection from custom installation locations on Mac devices	Previously, FlexNet inventory agent on Mac devices only collected bundle installation evidence from the standard /System and /Applications directories, which might lead to incomplete data collection if the bundles were installed at custom locations other than the standard directories. From this release, FlexNet inventory agent supports custom installation locations and automatically collects bundle installation evidence from all installation locations on Mac devices.

Reports

Item	Description
Oracle Java Worksheet Report	The new Oracle Java Worksheet report provides detailed information about all your instances of Oracle Java published by Oracle or Sun Java, whether installed on server or desktop devices. This report provides transparency on Java instances that FlexNet Manager Suite has been collected as an Oracle verified tool for Java.
Possible Options False Positives From Oracle Enterprise Manager Report	The new Possible Options False Positives From Oracle Enterprise Manager report collects all Oracle options that consume from licenses and have no corresponding Oracle database instances. The usage of these options might have been incorrectly reported by Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM).
Oracle Inventory Troubleshooting Report	The new Oracle Inventory Troubleshooting report provides inventory troubleshooting details for Oracle servers along with issues analysis and related error logs. The report aggregates data from multiple resources (logs, Oracle Instances Inventory, Oracle discovery information and so on) to provide a single insight on Oracle issues.
IBM license compliance Report Enhancements	Five new columns have been added to the IBM compliance reports. These new columns provide additional information to represent the zSystem hierarchy structure in FlexNet Manager Suite. For more details on the zSystem hierarchy structure, see IBM zSystem Virtual Inventory in the Online Help.
SAP Systems Inventory Details Report	The new SAP Systems Inventory Details report provides a great deal of details about SAP systems inventory. SAP data needed for compliance and optimization is usually complex because it includes various types of information, such as account information, SAP transaction history, engine measurements, and so on. Having accurate and up-to-date information is critical for trusting the consumption and optimization calculations.
vCenter Inventory Issues Analysis Report	The new vCenter Inventory Issues Analysis report addresses the challenges of troubleshooting the vCenter inventory. It does this by retrieving all discovered virtualization hosts and relevant analysis. The report collects data from discovered devices (VMWare inventory dates, discovery dates, inventory issues and logs), and aggregates data from various screens.
VMs Inventory Gaps Report	The former VMs Inventory Gaps From vCenters report has been renamed to VMs Inventory Gaps report with broadened scope. Previously, this report only returned and displayed virtual machines (VMs) and corresponding inventory status from a vCenter import. From this release, this report collects and displays all VMs as well as their inventory status, not only from the vCenter import but also from other virtualization technology imports. New columns have been added to the Virtual Machine group and in the Host group in the report.
Licenses Issues Analysis Report	The new Licenses Issues Analysis report provides details on licenses and looks for potential issues. Licenses contain all the logic to calculate license consumptions for various license types. And incorrect license configurations can cause issues, such as product versions not being correctly monitored. This report provides helpful data for transparency of the created licenses, such as covered products, other overlapping licenses, restriction details, when and by whom the license was lastly modified, and so on. The report also checks inconsistencies that previously could take hours to identify, such as whether the license has downgrade rights, whether the license has inconsistent upgrade and downgrade rights across its covered products, whether the license covers applications that have high numbers of unlicensed installations, and so on.
Unrecognized Installer Evidence Analysis Report	The new Unrecognized Installer Evidence Analysis report retrieves all unrecognized installer evidences and returns prioritized mapping suggestions to existing applications or to be created applications in the Application Recognition Library (ARL). Installer evidence is generally the most reliable way to recognize installed applications. The number of unrecognized installer evidence can be in the thousands. From the report, you can open the installer evidence and do the following: Ignore it if there is nothing of interest. Or modify it and link it to an existing application (in ARL or created application not in the ARL).
Merged Devices Issues Analysis Report	The new Merged Devices Issues Analysis report provides details on the inventory devices imported from same or multiple sources that have been merged and can cause false positives in application installations.

Enhancements

Item	Description
Re-verification for Oracle database and Fusion Middleware compliance	FlexNet Manager Suite and FlexNet inventory agent have been updated and re-verified by Oracle for Oracle database and Fusion Middleware compliance.
New Cognos version 11.1.7 for Flexera Analytics	From this release, Flexera Analytics is powered by a newer Cognos version 11.1.7 FP7, supporting TLS 1.2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2019.
New Allocation Reason field	A new Allocation Reason text field has been added, allowing you to document the reason why a user or device was allocated to a license. Prior to this enhancement, it was only possible to see why a user or device was allocated to a license in the license history. Similar to the existing Exemption Reason field, you can now see at a glance the reason why a device or user was allocated to a license.
Price Per Right Attribute	A new Price per Right attribute has been added to the existing optimization reporting objects. The logic of this cost is to use any possible financial information to reflect on the license consumption cost. The Price Per Right attribute is the unit cost of one entitlement (or point, depending on the license type).
Layout enhancements to multiple pages	Enhancements have been made to the layout of the following pages: All Inventory: A new Server column has been added to indicate whether the operating system is a server OS. Active Inventory: A new Server column has been added to indicate whether the operating system is a server OS. Properties for Inventory Devices on Apply Allocations and Exemptions: A new Cluster column has been added which enables the user to allocate or exempt all VMs based on their clusters. All Containers: Multiple new columns have been added and the columns have been grouped under certain categories. Information about the container's host has also been extended to display status, location, corporate unit, number of processor cores, and so on.