Inventory Device Count

[BoPuck22611]

When deploying an Agent in a Container and you discover what is inside that Container, does that count as a device? Does it impact the overall license entitlement?

[ChrisG]

The FlexNet inventory agent generally cannot be installed in a container. It should get installed on the computer that is running the container.

Containers  that don't include an operating system are not counted as "devices" for the purpose of licensing Flexera One ITAM or FlexNet Manager Suite.

[BoPuck22611]

Thanks Chris,

I'm a bit confused.

The following is from our online documentation:  This document covers the various agents that are available for IT Asset Management, known as the FlexNet inventory agent (covered in Part 1), and the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent and lightweight Kubernetes agent (covered in Part 2). The specialized script called imgtrack, built to run against the images that can instantiate containers and analyse the software that is available in the resulting containers, is covered in part 3.

I take this conversation to mean that even if we have an Agent on the Server, if the Server has Containers, we need something else in addition to the Agent on the server to get inventory from the Container.  Are you saying that the Agent on the server should be enough and we'll be able to inventory the Container using the single Agent?

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

The FlexNet inventory agent is able to gather Docker container details for containers on the devices the agent is installed on. No further agent is required for this.

The Flexera Kubernetes agents are separate agents that can be deployed into Kubernetes clusters as a native containerized application.

The Kubernetes agents are entirely independent of the standard FlexNet inventory agent that collects full hardware and software inventory from a variety of environments (nor do they in any sense replace that standard inventory tool). They also have a separate purpose: for example, they do not collect inventory of software that may be installed on the servers acting as nodes in the cluster.

See the following page for more information about the Kubernetes agents: Two FlexNet Kubernetes Agents.