How do we prevent Flexera from automatically consuming our MS CIS licenses in the most unfavourable way?

[RWG2022]

Hello,

We have Microsoft CIS Standard and Datacenter Core licenses, which we have recently entered into Flexera. We have reviewed the multiple ways that can be utilised to drive consumption, and we figured the easiest way for us is to manually allocate the licenses to inventory devices as this puts us in the most optimal position. We put the licenses into Flexera but didn't get chance to allocate them the same day. The next day we noticed that Flexera had automatically started consuming against these licenses in a way that made us look massively non-compliant. We are actually compliant on the back of a manual assessment we completed. My question is, how can I prevent Flexera from automatically consuming the licenses where it sees fit so I have the opportunity to allocate them manually instead? In a second scenario, Flexera had consumed 280 x CIS Standard core licenses to a single stand alone host to license all the VMs running, but it is actually cheaper to license the VMs instead of the host. I manually allocated the VMs to the license, but they won't compute consumption and the host is still consuming 280 licenses. It was still like this after two days. We have spent a full day trying to figure this out and have become more confused that we ended up deleting the licenses and rolling the purchases back to Unprocessed purchased in the hope we can create new licenses and start again. All purchases have been created using SKUs and I can confirm the product use rights and rules looked correct. Any help would be greatly received.

Thank you

[Nico_Erasmus · Accepted solution]

Hi @RWG2022 

I don't see if you are on premise or in cloud.  But the following is possible in either, based on your system version.

The end goal is to make use of two FNMS capabilities:

1. Report Restrictions
2. Allocations by report

These effectively allow you control, through reports, which devices are allowed or not allowed to consume certain licenses.  This is especially useful in a case like CIS std and CIS DC, where consumption against either license is possible.

In the case of CIS you want to do a density test on your clusters in order decide which license would be best, and then mark your devices as CIS HD or CIS LD via a business importer. 

I will post an link shortly about how this can be done.

[RWG2022]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. We are using ITAM cloud. So manually allocating inventory devices to licenses on the consumption tab isn't a possibility as far as CIS Std & DC are concerned? That's good to know. I've never used a business adapter before, so I think the only other option left for us is the restrictions tab and to specify a device group, which requires us to build some reports and load them into the restrictions tab on License Properties (device group)? Do these reports need anything more than an inventory device name? I've never done this before.

Thanks

[Nico_Erasmus]

Hi @RWG2022 

You may have a more obvious way to create your restrictions based on the intention behind the license purchases eg DC for large central Datacenters and Std for standalone devices and regional small Datacenters.  If that is marked in turn against each device, then you can use that in a simple restriction/allocation report.

If not, the document attached speaks to using API's to extract your data from FNMS, which allows you to make optimization decisions on cluster density, and then allocate devices to licenses via a Business Importer.  I have adjusted that to simply mark the category of the device as CISHD or CISLD , and then used a report that filters on category to drive the restrictions.

Regards

[Nico_Erasmus]

Hi @RWG2022 .

Just look the restriction reports up in the help.  You must start the report with the Inventory Device object, and then at least include some fields on Operating System, to restrict the report, and include another field that allows you to differentiate, like location or category.

[RWG2022]

Thank you so much. This is great advice. I am still getting used to Flexera, and it's a learning curve when there is a feature that we haven't used before. I will read this today and create the reports once I am more familiar. Thanks again. You've been a great help 🙂

[RWG2022]

Thanks again.. We purchased CIS DC for large clusters supporting hundreds of VM's. We also have standalone hosts in regional offices that only run a couple of VMs, so CIS Std is more cost effective. I think I'll try a custom report and load that as a device group on the restrictions tab of the licenses because I have no experience of using a Business Adapter yet. Thank you.