Summary For secure environments (for example, Oracle servers secured by firewalls), Flexera offers a stand-alone Oracle inventory collection agent that can be deployed on a compatible Windows server. This article explains what you need to know and do to use it. Discussion Discovery and inventory information is a prerequisite to performing license consumption calculations in FlexNet Manager Suite. We recommend that you deploy one or more inventory beacons on your network, and use any of the supported inventory collection methods to collect Oracle inventory. Each inventory beacon collects discovery and inventory information from the devices within its assigned subnet and sends this information to FlexNet Manager Suite. To collect inventory, each inventory beacon requires a network connection to the target Oracle servers within its assigned subnet. In secure environments (for example, Oracle databases secured by firewalls), you may not be able to establish a network connection between each installed inventory beacon and the Oracle servers within its assigned subnet, or you may not be able to install any inventory beacon at all. For such environments, Flexera offers a stand-alone Oracle inventory collection agent that can be deployed on a compatible Windows server. The stand-alone agent collects and saves the Oracle Database inventory information (.ndi files) to a specified location. You can collect hardware inventory (required for Oracle processor-based licenses) through the locally-installed ndtrack or any third-party inventory database. If you do not deploy the agent on an inventory beacon, you will have to transfer the collected data to FlexNet Manager Suite, for performing license consumption calculations. Note: Flexera recommends that you use the stand-alone inventory agent, and not ORATrack, for collecting inventory data on Oracle installations. The stand-alone inventory agent collects hardware information as well as Oracle installation data (whereas ORATrack only collects Oracle data), so it will provide a more comprehensive result. This document describes the installation and operation of the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent. The Oracle Discovery and Inventory chapter of the Systems Reference Guide PDF explains the supported inventory collection methods. Overview The stand-alone Oracle inventory agent has been designed to remotely collect Oracle Database inventory from Oracle servers when you cannot use any of the inventory collection methods recommended by Flexera. You can deploy this agent on any computer with Windows desktop (Windows 7 or higher) or Server (2008 or 2012) edition. After you configure the agent with details of the target Oracle servers, the agent can connect to each Oracle server using the Oracle Data Access Component (ODAC) driver (installed as a part of Oracle client on the computer where the agent is deployed). The agent then uses a pre-configured audit database user to extract Oracle inventory. The collected information is saved to a configured location from where it can be uploaded to FlexNet Manager Suite for license consumption calculations. The following diagram illustrates the process of Oracle inventory collection through the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent. Important: We recommend that you use the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent only for Oracle hosts that have a single Oracle database service running on them. To collect Oracle inventory through the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent, complete the following steps: Verify the prerequisites. See the Prerequisites section below. Deploy the inventory agent. See the Deploying the Agent section below. Configure the inventory agent. See the Configuring the Agent section below. Collect Oracle inventory. See the Collecting Inventory section below. Export the collected inventory to FlexNet Manager Suite. See the Exporting Inventory section below. (Optional) Uninstall the inventory agent. See the Uninstalling the Agent section below. Prerequisites The following are the prerequisites for inventory collection using the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent: On the computer where the agent is to be deployed Windows desktop (Windows 7 or higher) or Server (2008 or 2012) edition Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0 or later Oracle Client version 11.2xxx (32-bit). It contains the ODAC driver required to connect to Oracle servers. On each target Oracle Database server An audit account with read-only permissions on the Oracle Database for all the tables and views needed for collecting Oracle inventory. One helpful practice is to use the same set of credentials on all servers. You can use a specially designed script to create and configure an audit user (for example, fnmoaudit) on each Oracle server with a password of your choice. To get this script, go to this Knowledge Base article on the Flexera Community. The script is available as an attachment at the bottom of the page. For details about Oracle tables and views required for inventory collection, see the Appendix below. Deploying the Agent The stand-alone Oracle inventory agent is shipped as a zip archive. You can deploy this agent on a computer with a compatible version of Microsoft Windows. Follow these steps to deploy the agent: Create a temporary folder (for example, OracleInventory) on the Windows desktop or any other location. Extract the contents of the Flexera-supplied stand-alone inventory agent file Oracle-Agent.zip into this folder. Using Windows Explorer, create a folder to save the collected inventory information (for example, C:\Inventories\). You should add this path to the OutputDir parameter in the oratrack.ini file. Configuring the Agent To enable the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent to collect inventory from target Oracle databases, register every target Oracle server with the agent, and record the Oracle service name for each Oracle server in the oratrack.ini file. Follow these steps to configure the agent: Ensure that you have both: Installed the compatible ODAC driver on the Windows server where the agent is deployed. Created the audit user on each of the target Oracle servers. Launch the Windows command prompt with the "Run as administrator" option enabled and browse to the OracleInventory folder. Invoke the agent by using the following command. The agent should display a list of available options: ..\OracleInventory> oratrack server Query specified server -a Query all configured servers -l List configured servers and credentials -s Set logon credentials for server -d Delete logon credentials for server When the agent is not being run for the first time, use the following command to list any previously-targeted Oracle servers that are still registered with the agent. oratrack.exe -l If any undesired Oracle servers are registered with the agent, use the following command with the name of the Oracle server whose registration is to be deleted. oratrack.exe -d <server name> where <server name> is the name of the target Oracle server. Use the following command to register a target Oracle server with the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent. The agent will collect inventory only from the Oracle servers registered with it. oratrack.exe -s <server name> where <server name> is the name of the target Oracle server that is to be registered with the agent. The agent prompts you to enter the credentials of the audit user created on this server with the user creation script. For details about how to get the user creation script, see the Prerequisites section above. Enter the credentials for the audit user created on this Oracle server. Repeat step 6 for each of the target Oracle servers. The agent records each server name with its user name and encrypted password in the oratrack.ini file in the OracleInventory folder. To record Oracle service names, open the oratrack.ini from the OracleInventory folder. The file should contain details of every Oracle server registered with the agent. Add the service and port information for each of the registered Oracle servers. The sixth line of the following code shows an example service name for the oracle.example.com Oracle server. [Global] OutputDir=C:\Inventories [oracle.example.com] Username=<user name> Password= ($%^&(^TIJHHDJH Service=<service name> Port=<port num> Note: The oratrack.exe tool encrypts the password automatically, before saving it to the oratrack.ini file. Set the OutputDir parameter to the path where you want the agent to store the collected inventory files. The above code example sets the output directory to C:\Inventories. Use the following command to review the list of Oracle servers registered with the stand-alone agent: oratrack.exe -l Your agent is now ready to collect inventory from target Oracle servers. Warning: We do not recommend using the stand-alone Oracle inventory collection agent with Oracle hosts running multiple Oracle Database services. If you are using the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent to collect inventory from such an Oracle host, you need to: Make sure that the multiple database versions on the host are compatible with the Oracle client version installed on the computer where you are using the Oratrack agent. If the database versions are incompatible with the installed Oracle client version, the agent may not work as expected. Run the tool for every Oracle service on the host, after changing the service name in the oratrack.ini file. Copy the generated inventory (.ndi) file out of the output folder, before you run the tool with the changed service name to save it from being overwritten with the new inventory file. Upload the multiple inventory files to FlexNet Manager Suite. Collecting Inventory When you have registered all target Oracle servers with the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent, you can run the agent to collect Oracle Database inventory from the registered Oracle servers. Follow these steps: Use the following command to run the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent. The agent executes, collects inventory from each of the Oracle servers listed in the oratrack.ini file, and saves the inventory files (.ndi) in the output folder specified in the oratrack.ini file. oratrack.exe -a The agent runs and displays some log messages. Wait until the command execution is over. Navigate to the output folder (C:\Inventories) and verify that an .ndi file exists for each of the target Oracle servers. If the inventory file for a particular Oracle server is missing, you can test its connectivity using the following command: sqlplus fnmoaudit/<password>@<oracle instance> where fnmoaudit is the name of the audit user, <password> is the password for the audit user, and <oracle instance> is the name of the Oracle server. Contact your network administrator to resolve any connection errors. Exporting Inventory The license consumption calculation process of FlexNet Manager Suite requires the collected .ndi files for calculating your Oracle license position. If you have installed FlexNet Beacon software, you can manually transfer the collected inventory (.ndi) files to the Warehouse directory\Incoming\Inventories folder. The inventory beacon uploads the inventory to FlexNet Manager Suite. If you have not installed any inventory beacon, you can use any third-party methods to export the imported inventory to the C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Inventories folder on the FlexNet Manager Suite server. Some Oracle license calculations (for example, processor-based) are dependent on the hardware information of the host. To get accurate license consumption calculations, FlexNet Manager Suite advises you to gather and upload the hardware inventory of the target Oracle hosts, in addition to the Oracle Database inventory. You can use any third-party inventory system, or any Flexera recommended inventory collection method, to collect hardware inventory from the target Oracle servers. For more information about the inventory collection methods supported by Flexera, see the Oracle Discovery and Inventory chapter in the System Reference Guide PDF. Uninstalling the Agent You can easily uninstall the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent by following these steps: Using Windows Explorer, delete the following folders: OracleInventory — the deployment folder C:\Inventories\ — the output folder. (Optional) Request your Oracle Database administrator to remove the audit user from each of the target Oracle servers. Appendix: Oracle Tables and Views for Oracle Inventory Collection You need to create a database audit account on each of the target Oracle servers to collect Oracle inventory using the stand-alone Oracle inventory agent. The database account must have read-only access to the following tables and views. These tables contain only internal database information, and no user or application data. The database administrator can use a script from Flexera to create a user fnmoaudit on all target Oracle servers. applsys.fnd_app_servers applsys.fnd_application_tl applsys.fnd_nodes applsys.fnd_product_installations applsys.fnd_responsibility applsys.fnd_user apps.fnd_user_resp_groups CONTENT.ODM_DOCUMENT DMSYS.DM$MODEL DMSYS.DM$OBJECT DMSYS.DM$P_MODEL DVSYS.DBA_DV_REALM LBACSYS.LBAC$POLT MDSYS.ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA MDSYS.SDO_GEOM_METADATA_TABLE ODM.ODM_MINING_MODEL ODM.ODM_RECORD OLAPSYS.DBA$OLAP_CUBES SYS.DBA_ADVISOR_TASKS SYS.DBA_AWS SYS.DBA_CUBES SYS.DBA_ENCRYPTED_COLUMNS SYS.DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS SYS.DBA_FLASHBACK_ARCHIVE SYS.DBA_FLASHBACK_ARCHIVE_TABLES SYS.DBA_FLASHBACK_ARCHIVE_TS SYS.DBA_INDEXES SYS.DBA_LOB_PARTITIONS SYS.DBA_LOB_SUBPARTITIONS SYS.DBA_LOBS SYS.DBA_MINING_MODELS SYS.DBA_OBJECTS SYS.DBA_RECYCLEBIN SYS.DBA_REGISTRY SYS.DBA_SEGMENTS SYS.DBA_SQL_PROFILES SYS.DBA_SQLSET SYS.DBA_SQLSET_REFERENCES SYS.DBA_TAB_PARTITIONS SYS.DBA_TAB_SUBPARTITIONS SYS.DBA_TABLES SYS.DBA_TABLESPACES SYS.DBA_USERS SYS.DUAL SYS.GV_$INSTANCE SYS.GV_$PARAMETER SYS.REGISTRY$HISTORY SYS.ROLE_SYS_PRIVS SYS.USER_ROLE_PRIVS SYS.USER_SYS_PRIVS SYS.V_$ARCHIVE_DEST_STATUS SYS.V_$BLOCK_CHANGE_TRACKING SYS.V_$CONTAINERS SYS.V_$DATABASE SYS.V_$INSTANCE SYS.V_$LICENSE SYS.V_$OPTION SYS.V_$PARAMETER SYS.V_$SESSION SYS.V_$VERSION SYSMAN.MGMT_$TARGET SYSMAN.MGMT_ADMIN_LICENSES SYSMAN.MGMT_FU_LICENSE_MAP SYSMAN.MGMT_FU_REGISTRATIONS SYSMAN.MGMT_FU_STATISTICS SYSMAN.MGMT_INV_COMPONENT SYSMAN.MGMT_LICENSE_CONFIRMATION SYSMAN.MGMT_LICENSE_DEFINITIONS SYSMAN.MGMT_LICENSES SYSMAN.MGMT_TARGETS SYSMAN.MGMT_VERSIONS ... View more

Summary FlexNet Manager Suite contains data about Oracle installations. Some of this data can be extracted and provided to people from Oracle License Management Services (Oracle LMS), who can analyse that data for you to assist with the status of your Oracle license consumption. This article provides guidance on how to override the following Oracle LMS information: Database edition License metrics (when multiple Oracle license metrics are in use within the enterprise) Oracle installation environment usage (when other than production) Discussion Database Edition Note: This refers to the database server edition used for licensing the server (not to be confused with the installed edition); for example, a DB SE installation covered by DB SE1 license. Exported Oracle LMS ORCL_OVERVIEW data from FlexNet Manager Suite includes the installed Oracle edition. Where an installed Oracle Database edition is different from the licensed Oracle edition used within the FlexNet Manager Suite, Flexera recommends updating the Oracle Database edition value within LMS ORCL_OVERVIEW. You should manually update the value of the Oracle Database edition that is installed on the server with the edition recorded in the license. You can update the licensed Oracle database edition by following these steps: Extract the exported Oracle LMS data from FlexNet Manager Suite. (Refer to the Oracle Instances topic in the online help for FlexNet Manager Suite for instructions.) Find the record for the particular Oracle Database server, and in the ORCL_OVERVIEW.csv file, update the DATABASE EDITION with the appropriate licensed edition; for example: Oracle Database Standard Edition One (SE1) Oracle Database Standard Edition (SE) Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (EE) License Metric The license metric value within an exported LMS ORCL_OVERVIEW file comes from the license type used within FlexNet Manager Suite to license an Oracle Database installation. Where multiple license metrics (for example, Oracle Named User Plus and Oracle Processor) are used to license Oracle Database installations within FlexNet Manager Suite, Flexera recommends using allocations or restrictions with such Oracle installation servers. You can apply allocations to Oracle Database licenses by following these steps: Open the license properties. On the Consumption tab, search for, and select, the required installation of Oracle Database. Use the Allocate button to choose the kind of allocation to make for the selected installation. Similarly, restrictions may be applied in the Restrictions tab of the license properties; or you may prefer to use the Group assignment tab to manage license priorities. Environment Usage By default, all inventory devices are listed for production use. Where Oracle is installed in an environment other than production (for example, “Test”), Flexera recommends updating the inventory device role, which automatically adjusts the license consumption within FlexNet Manager Suite, as well as updating the files exported for delivery to Oracle License Management Services. You can adjust the inventory device role by following these steps: Go to Discovery & Inventory > Oracle Instances. Select the Oracle server to open the inventory device properties. On the General tab, select the appropriate device role value (for example, Test) to update the default Production device role. Save the updated properties. Reconcile. (Either wait for an overnight reconcile, or if you have Administrator access, reconcile immediately. Note: Restrict the reconcile to Oracle only by deselecting Reconcile all publishers.) Perform an Oracle LMS data export. (Refer to the Oracle Instances topic in the online help for FlexNet Manager Suite for instructions.) ORCL_OVERVIEW will now reflect the updated environment usage for that Oracle server. ... View more

Discovery and inventory information are necessary for FlexNet Manager Suite to perform license consumption calculations. For collecting inventory, we recommend that you deploy one or more inventory beacons on your network and use supported inventory collection methods. Each inventory beacon deployed collects discovery and inventory information from the devices within its assigned subnet and sends this information to FlexNet Manager Suite. To collect VMware inventory, inventory beacons require a network connection to the target VMware vCenter or ESX servers within its assigned subnet. This may not be possible in secure environments (like VMware servers secured by firewalls) – you may not be able to establish a network connection between each installed inventory beacon and the VMware servers within its assigned subnet, or you may not be able to install inventory beacons at all. Flexera offers a stand-alone VMware inventory collection agent for such environments that can be installed on a Windows server. How the stand-alone VMware inventory agent works The stand-alone VMware inventory agent remotely collects VMware (ESX or vCenter) inventory when you cannot use the standard inventory collection methods recommended by Flexera. You can deploy the agent on any computer with Windows desktop (Windows 7 or higher) or server (2008 or 2012) edition. The agent can collect inventory from individual VMware ESX servers but works more efficiently with VMware vCenter servers, where it collects inventory for all VMware ESX servers registered with the target VMware vCenter server. In a clustered environment, the agent can collect VMware inventory for the entire VMware cluster through the target VMware vCenter server. The stand-alone agent saves the collected VMware inventory information (as .ndi files) to a specified location. You can then export the collected data to FlexNet Manager Suite to perform license consumption calculations. Collecting inventory To collect VMware inventory, the agent needs credentials for an account with read access to the VMware SDK URL on each of the target VMware servers. After configuring the agent with the details of the target VMware servers, the agent collects VMware inventory using API calls (see the “API Calls for VMware Inventory Collection” section below for details). The collected information is saved to a configured location and can be uploaded to FlexNet Manager Suite for license consumption calculations. How to collect VMware inventory through the stand-alone VMware inventory agent To collect VMware inventory through the stand-alone VMware inventory agent, complete the following steps: 1. Verify the prerequisites Prerequisites for inventory collection using the stand-alone VMware inventory agent: A VMware vSphere/vCenter/ESXi server, supporting versions from 5.0 to 6.7 inclusive. Note: Inventory is not possible on the free license versions of ESXi. The following software products are required on the server where the agent is to be deployed: Windows desktop (Windows 7 or higher) or Server (2008 or 2012) edition Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0 or later. Network access to the target VMware vCenter or ESX hosts. An account with read access to the VMware SDK URL is required on each target vCenter or ESX host.   2. Deploy the inventory agent The stand-alone VMware inventory agent is shipped as a zip archive. To deploy the agent: A. Create a folder (for example, VMwareInventory) on the Windows desktop or your preferred location. B. Extract the contents of the Flexera-supplied stand-alone inventory agent file FNMS-VMware-Scanner.zip into this folder (see zip file attached). C. Using Windows Explorer, create a folder to save the collected inventory information (for example, C:\Inventories\). You should add this path to the OutputDir parameter in the esxquery.ini file.   3. Configure the inventory agent To enable the stand-alone VMware inventory agent to collect inventory from target VMware servers, register every target VMware server with the agent, and record the VMware server name in the esxquery.ini file. Follow these steps to configure the agent: A. Launch the Windows command prompt with the "Run as administrator" option enabled on the computer where you deployed the agent. Locate the folder you created to house VMware inventory (VMwareInventory in this example). B. Invoke the agent by using the command: ..\VMwareInventory> esxquery  The agent should display a list of available options: server Query specified server -a Query all configured servers -l List configured servers and credentials -s Set logon credentials for server -d Delete logon credentials for server -c Use existing logon session cookie -f Set VMware license flag for server   C. After running the agent the first time, you can use the following command to list any previously-targeted VMware servers that are still registered with the agent: esxquery.exe -l D. If any undesired VMware servers are registered with the agent, use the following command with the name of the VMware server whose registration you want deleted, where <server name> is the VMware server name. esxquery.exe -d <server name> E. Use the following command to register a target VMware server with the stand-alone VMware inventory agent, where <server name> is the name of the target VMware server to be registered with the agent. The agent will collect inventory only from the VMware servers registered with it. esxquery.exe -s <server name>  The agent prompts you to enter the credentials for this server. F. Enter the credentials for the account with read access to the VMware SDK URL <https://<server name>/sdk>> created on this VMware server. G. Repeat step E for each of the target VMware servers. The agent records each server name with its username and encrypted password in the esxquery.ini file in the VMwareInventory folder. H. Set the OutputDir parameter to the path where you want the agent to store the collected inventory files. Example The following code example sets the output directory to the .\Inventories sub-folder under the VMwareInventory folder. The example shows how two VMware servers (server1 and server2) are recorded in the esxquery.ini file. [Global] OutputDir=.\Inventories [server1] Username=<domain\user name> Password=CtCi3795PXgxC3W8W7gdSg== [server2] Username=<domain\user name> Password=EEfoiY3pmz0xC3W8W7gdSg== The esxquery.exe tool encrypts the password automatically, before saving it to the esxquery.ini file. I. Use the following command to review the list of VMware servers registered with the stand-alone agent: esxquery.exe -l Your agent is now ready to collect inventory from the target VMware servers. 4. Collect VMware inventory When you have registered all target VMware servers with the stand-alone VMware inventory agent, you can run the agent to collect VMware inventory from the registered VMware servers. A. Use the following command to run the stand-alone VMware inventory agent: esxquery.exe -a The agent executes, collects inventory from each of the servers listed in the esxquery.ini file, and saves the inventory files (.ndi) in the output folder specified in the esxquery.ini file. The agent runs and displays inventory success messages. The following code shows an example output: C:\Flexera\VCenter Query>esxquery.exe -a servername: found VMware vCenter Server v4.1.0 servername: inventory generated successfully B. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the output folder (C:\VMwareInventory\Inventories). You should see a .ndi file for each of the target ESX servers. Each .ndi file contains inventory for a target ESX server and all the virtual machines registered with it. Note: The stand-alone VMware inventory agent also collects inventory for the virtual machines switched off during the inventory collection process.   5. Export inventory to FlexNet Manager Suite FlexNet Manager Suite’s license consumption calculation process requires the .ndi files collected to calculate your VMware license position. If you have installed FlexNet Beacon, you can manually transfer the collected inventory (.ndi) files to the Incoming\Inventories folder. The FlexNet Beacon uploads the inventory to FlexNet Manager Suite. If you have not installed any inventory beacons, you can use any third-party methods to export the imported inventory to the C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Inventories folder on the FlexNet Manager Suite server. Uninstalling the Agent You can easily uninstall the stand-alone VMware inventory tool by deleting the following folders: Deployment folder (VMwareInventory) Output folder (Inventories) API Calls for VMware Inventory Collection The stand-alone VMware inventory agent connects to the VMware SDK URL (https://<servername>/sdk) on each target VMware server. This connection requires an account with read access to the SDK URL. The agent makes the following API calls through the SDK once a connection is established with the target VMware server: API name Description GetServiceContent A single call is made to this API to retrieve the ServiceInstance to enable further queries. RetrieveProperties: Host Information A single call is made against the root folder to return information about each host server with the following attributes: ComputeResource.host ClusterComputeResource.host Datacenter.hostFolder Datacenter.vmFolder Folder.childEntity RetrieveProperties: VM Information A call is made against each returned HostSystem to obtain the following attributes for each virtual machine that exists on the host: HostSystem.parent ComputeResource.resourcePool ResourcePool.resourcePool ResourcePool.vm ... View more