There is a requirement to retire the auto-scale VM instances every day to avoid consuming licenses

[Alokkumarkashya]

Hi All,

We have a requirement to retire auto-scale VM instances on a daily basis to ensure that licenses are not consumed even we are retiring them forcefully.

Approach implemented: I created a scheduled job that retires the auto-scale VM instances every day at 8:00 AM, prior to the execution of the ServiceNow license reconciliation job.

The job updates the following fields:

• Install Status: Retired
• Operational Status: Retired
• Life Cycle Stage: End of Life
• Life Cycle Stage Status: Retired

Despite these updates, the license count is not decreasing as expected.

Has anyone faced a similar issue before? If so, could you please share the root cause and the steps taken to resolve it?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Alok

[pr8172510]

Hi @Alokkumarkashya,

Changing the CI to Retired alone may not reclaim a license in SAM Pro. License consumption is determined by the reconciliation process, not only by the CI lifecycle status.

verify 

• Ensure the related Software Installation records are no longer considered active.

• Verify the Discovery Model and reconciliation rules are not still counting the retired VM.

• Run the required SAM normalization and reconciliation jobs after your scheduled retirement job completes.

• Review the License Workbench or reconciliation results to identify why the installation is still being counted.

According to the ServiceNow SAM Pro documentation, license compliance is calculated from software installation and reconciliation data, not only the CI lifecycle status. Therefore, updating the CI to Retired by itself may not reclaim the license if the software installation remains in scope for reconciliation.

Hope this helps.

[Tanushree Maiti]

HI @Alokkumarkashya 

Refer: https://www.servicenow.com/community/itom-forum/turned-off-vm-instances-causing-impact-on-itom-licen...

"Terminate the VMs if you don't want them licensed in ITOM. or restrict the scope/permissions to specific clusters or VMware datacentres via vCenter user permissions so that VMs outside of these are not picked up."

Also check: https://www.servicenow.com/community/itom-forum/turn-off-aws-auto-scaling-groups/m-p/3204841

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1118027

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itom-forum/itom-discovery-asset-retirement/td-p/3564324

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itom-forum/retiring-cis-hosted-os-server-and-virtual-instance/m...