ServiceNow SAM supports license compliance management of Microsoft System Center as well as the CIS Suite. This article provides an overview of how ServiceNow enables compliance management of these products.
What is Microsoft System Center?
System Center is a family or suite of management tools from Microsoft. It includes products like SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager, also known as End Point Configuration Manager), System Center Data Protection Manager, System Center Operations Manager, and many more.
Figure 1 System Center suite products
The Products in this family help manage applications and services across cloud, physical, and virtual infrastructures.
It is also offered as a bundled suite with Windows Server and is known as Core Infrastructure Server (CIS) Suite.
How ServiceNow SAM supports license compliance management for System Center and CIS Suite
ServiceNow supports compliance of System Center Suite, as well as individual product licensing. In the figure below you can see the different suite components are automatically added as part of content.
Figure 2 System Center 2016 Data Center Software Model on ServiceNow SAM
As per Microsoft, only the end points that are managed using System Center require Management Licenses (MLs) to be assigned, meaning a license is consumed only when a system center agent is installed on an end point that is to be managed.
No licenses are consumed for Distribution Points or Management Points, or for the management server which runs the System Center Management Console.
These Management Licenses (MLs), could be one of the following:
- Server MLs: Required for Managed devices running server OSEs (Operating system environments)
- Client MLs: Required for Managed devices running non-server OSEs (Operating system environments)
This is depicted in the figure below:
Figure 3 Server MLs and Client MLs on System Center
Support for Licensing System Center Server MLs:
Server MLs are based on core-based licensing and these rules are similar to Microsoft Windows Server licensing wherein;
- A minimum of 8 core licenses are assigned per processor
- And a minimum of 16 core licenses are assigned per server
There are additional virtualization rights based on System Center Editions (i.e. Data Center or Standard).
- System Center 2016 Standard allows the management of up to two OSEs per license. The server must be licensed again to manage a further 2 virtual machines
- System Center 2016 Datacenter allows the management of an unlimited number of OSEs per license.
ServiceNow SAM manages these different licensing rules through an efficient license metric i.e. Core (with CAL).
Figure 4 License Model Rules for System Center on ServiceNow SAM
In addition, a number of SKUs (Publisher Part Number) are defined for System Center, which can be selected for the addition of entitlements.
Figure 5 SKUs as per content on ServiceNow SAM
To ensure correct license compliance results for System Center on ServiceNow, please perform the following:
- Ensure that the correct DMAP is selected for System Center Suite: This will ensure the latest software components to be included under the suite family.
- Ensure that the inference percentage on the suite is entered correctly: This will ensure that even if one System Center product is installed, licenses will be consumed from the suite entitlements effectively.
- Ensure that the license metric selected is per Core (CAL) on the entitlements: This ensures that the right licensing rules will be applied for System Center.
- Ensure that a licensable software component like System Center Configuration Manager is installed on the end points for licenses to be consumed effectively.
Support for Licensing System Center Client MLs:
Client Management Licenses are required when System Center agents are installed on non-server OSE machines or client machines.
The following products require Client MLs, and are either licensed per user / per device/ per OSE:
- System Center Configuration Manager 1606 CML (user/OSE)
- System Center Endpoint Protection 1606 SL (user/device)
- System Center 2016 Data Protection Manager CML (user/OSE)
- System Center 2016 Orchestrator CML (user/OSE)
- System Center 2016 Operations Manager CML (user/OSE)
- System Center 2016 Service Manager CML (user/OSE)
SKU or Publisher Part Numbers are provided for the same, which can be easily used to create entitlements and the respective software model.
Figure 6 System Center Client MLs entitlement created on ServiceNow SAM
Support for Core Infrastructure Server Suite (CIS):
ServiceNow supports CIS Suite Licensing. More information on our support for suite licensing is provided in this article: Handling Software Suites on ServiceNow SAM.
Figure 7 CIS Suite Support on ServiceNow SAM
New Licensing Changes Introduced by Microsoft
As introduced in Ignite 2019, Microsoft is combining SCCM and Microsoft Intune as a brand new product called Microsoft Endpoint Manager. This will simplify licensing and customers would continue to leverage their existing configuration manager investments.
If you are licensed with Configuration Manager then you are licensed for Intune as well. This is applicable for version 1910 and beyond, and helps customers “co-manage” their machines including PCs, and mobiles using “one” software.
ServiceNow offers support for this new licensing change, as shown in the figure below:
Figure 8 Support for "New" End Point Configuration Manager
In the figure above you can see that ServiceNow SAM supports license management of the Configuration Manager (also called as Microsoft End Point Configuration Manager) suite that includes both the software components viz. SCCM and Intune. When installs of both these products are found, they are reconciled to a single software suite.
Author: Srinivas Ramanujaiah
