Hi, I attach an updated .ppt which recommends the use of the Unit Quantity = 2 approach to license VMs and also provides the points rule table I provided later in the thread so that your Socket Pair license for standalone physical servers can also consume purchases with a unit quantity of 2.  Hope this helps. Stewart ... View more

Another note on this:  in the post above I mention the following when using a purchase qty of 2 to manage the 2 VM license: The downside of this is related to any re-assignment of purchases between the Virtual space (where you cover 2 VMs per license) and the non-virtualised space (where the same licenses can be used to cover 2 sockets of a standalone server), as you will have to adjust the unit quantity of the purchase as you re-assign (you do not want a unit quantity of 2 for that purchase as it could lead to a single purchase covering to single socket servers, or errors for servers with an odd number of sockets, which would be incorrect, if a little unlikely). Actually we can get around this by creating a points ruleset like the following for the 2 Socket license in FNMS.  This way you can always apply a unit quantity of 2 to the purchase, whether it is assigned to the 2 Socket license or the 2 VM license and can -re-assign the purchases freely between the 2 licenses as needed. So the purchase looks like:  Quantity = 1, Unit Quantity = 2, Effective quantity = 2.  For the 2 VM license we will consume  1 license per VM, which equates to each purchase covering 2 VMs. For the 2 Socket license we will consume 2 licenses per pair of sockets (1 Proc server consumes 2 licenses, 2 proc server consumes 2 licenses, 3 proc server consumes 4 licenses, 4 proc server consumes 4 licenses, etc), which equates to each purchase covering a socket pair. Regards, Stewart           ... View more

Also, as mentioned in another post, you can get creative with Core points and Processor points licenses in order to restrict the license to Virtual Servers only, and can even make them function like a device license. Restriction can be acheived through the addition of a specified model in the points rule you create which will restrict the license to models such as 'VMWare Virtual Platform'. Adding a points or core factor like 0.000001 will always result in the consumption for that device being 1 (ie just like a device license). So for the Red Hat 2 VM license example, we could use this approach to create a device license restricted to VMs, which when coupled with a Purchase unit quantity of 2 would give you what you need.  You could add a second rule restricted to specific clouds, but with no model specified, to cover cloud instances. Regards,  Stewart     ... View more

Hi, Flexnet inventory will collect the core details relevant to Oracle Licensing and particularly relevant to the Oracle Partitioning Policy, which informs how to count cores in virtual environments.  An Oracle Processor or Named user Plus License type in Flexnet Manager will apply the required calculations to represent this in terms of Oracle license consumption.  The way cores should be counted differs between virtualization technologies and platforms, so in order to respond in more detail it would be helpful to know the following: Which Virtualisation technologies are in use? Are there any particular virtualization scenarios/configurations you are using? Regards, Stewart ... View more

Hi Beth, If you could expand on your objective a little I can hopefully help out.  For example: How many base purchases and maintenance do you start with? How many of each do you want to move to another license? Does the target license already have the base purchases? Etc PS – if you need only to move maintenance volumes to a license with existing base purchases you can open the maintenance purchase, go to the Licenses tab and re-assign volumes of the purchases between multiple licenses from there. Stewart ... View more

Hi again, I can certainly see a case for consumption of processor and core based licenses rolling over into another license when the first is full. Having said that, in the use case you describe I do think using a single license is perhaps the way to go. If you reconcile the single license you can see in the Group Assignment tab the total number consumed versus the break down of purchases owned per Enterprise group, so the number from the parent company, the number purchased directly and the number consumed in total would be easily available (assuming you have suitable Enterprise groups to map the purchases to). Stewart ... View more

Hi Markward, Your analysis of what is happening is correct and once FNMS starts to consume one of your Oracle licenses against the ESX cluster it will continue to do so until the full cluster is licensed. The answer could be to review the way you split your entitlement. I generally recommend that the number of licenses for the same product is rationalised as much as possible wherever the entitlement is for the same product and metric and has the same use-rights and scope. If your licenses are split by organisation it may be better to maintain separate purchases for the different organisations but assign them to the same license. Then in terms of consumption per organisation you could develop reports to cover that requirement based on the number of licensed cores (On VMs where the software is licensed), VM Ownership, number of cores in the cluster and core licenses owned per organisation. With your licenses split as they are, even if you did manage to make the cluster consume multiple licenses, how would you decide or control how many of each license were consumed by the cluster? Of course there are a number of factors here, so you may have other reasons for splitting out the licenses and I note your mention of slightly different use-rights in some cases. Stewart ... View more

Because we are aiming to bring in the Sub-Capacity license consumption from ILMT the frequent scanning is not relevant in this case. It is potentially relevant that the devices have the Flexnet Agent and also come in from the ILMT import.  It is not clear to me from your response if you see any devices where the calculation is 'Internal' (which would indicate device duplication and/or the device inventory coming only from Flexnet inventory).  This can be seen in the Consumption tab of the license and you will need to add a field called 'Calculated by'. If there are no devices where the Calculated By is 'Internal' then the consumption counts should all add up.  Can you confirm where you see the gap?  You can extract the consumption tab of the license in question and compare the consumption count you see for each physical device to that you see in ILMT, in order to-pin point where the issue may be.     ... View more

Hi, You can find further information about the import of ILMT data to FNMS in the FNMS System Reference Guide/‘Using ILMT (And Importing Results)’.  The link to this document is available in the first page of the FNMS Online Help.  Here is a summary of possible causes. This could be caused by duplicate or additional inventory – if a device is imported with the ILMT import and is also present from another inventory tool (such as SCCM for example, or the Flexnet agent) FNMS will identify these as the same device if possible and give the ILMT data the priority, however in the following cases this will not happen: If FNMS has no way to match the devices (name could be slightly different, different serial number from the two tools and so on) The device may only be reported from the other inventory source and not coming in from ILMT at all In these cases FNMS will calculate PVU license consumption for the ‘new’ device and add this to the consumption count.  You can identify such cases by going to the consumption tab of the license in FNMS and adding the field ‘Calculated By’, then look for ‘Internal’.  This indicates that FNMS is calculating the consumption for that device rather than taking the consumption count from ILMT.  In the latest version these devices will also always be calculated at Full-Capacity, so the impact could be significant. If the cause is that the device is missing from ILMT then the solution is to add the device to ILMT's inventory scope.  If the cause is a duplication of the device due to a lack of data integration from the two inventory sources this may need a separate thread to discuss, but the system reference guide gives some suggestions on how to handle this Import schedules - When was ILMT data imported?  It could be that ILMT has been refreshed since the last import to FNMS. Device exemptions – Please consider if you have exempted any devices from consuming the license in FNMS as this will change the consumption count.   ... View more

Hi Craig, In  many cases this means a combination of license consumption priority settings and allocation of the VMs or Physical machines to the appropriate license.  Based on the assumption that most new installations are likely to be to virtual servers and physical environments are likely to be less dynamic I’d take the following approach: In each application go to the licenses tab and change the license consumption priority so that devices will always try to consume the Virtual license first (Move the Virtual License to the top).  You will need to do this for each version of the application. In License Compliance/Apply Allocations and Exemptions, define a list of the installations of the product in question, add a filter for Device Type = Computer Allocate all of these to the Physical License (Select all, click allocate, ‘Allocate to an existing license’, choose the Physical License) Save the view as a Management View (Button is In the top right hand corner of the view) so that each week/month you can just go back to it without re-applying the filters The result is that all installations will try to consume the Virtual License except for the allocated Computers which will consume the Physical license.  The only issue you may have is if the virtual license runs out and spills into the physical one.  You should be able to avoid this by making the Virtual License ‘Subject to True up’ in the Compliance tab of the License.  You can refresh the allocations as often as you like by going to the saved view and doing the third step above. However, it is also possible to restrict licenses to consume only certain groups of devices, such as virtual servers, but this depends on your Virtual Servers being easily identifiable by their model (For example where Model = VMware Virtual Platform or Virtual machine): This approach uses a Core or Processor Points License Type (Depending on the metric you want to model) and a locally created points ruleset.  By defining a points rule which applies only where the Model = X we can apply certain logic to devices with a particular Model in FNMS and we can also restrict licenses to only be consumed by those groups of devices.  In your example we would: Create both licenses and use the prioritisation as above so that FNMS always tries to use the Virtual license first But, create the Virtual license as a core points or Processor points license.  If we get creative with the points rulesets we can make this license behave as a device/instance, core or processor license.  The result is that all installations will try to consume the Virtual license but only those with a model of Virtual Machine or VMware Virtual Platform will be able to (In this example).  All other installations then consume the Physical license.  Again, you may need to tag the Virtual License as Subject to True-up to avoid spillover into the Physical license. Check the Model of your VMs in question to see if this is a feasible approach for you and, if it is, feel free to get back with some more information about the products and licenses you have and I am happy to help with the points ruleset. Stewart ... View more