SAM Pro provides “optimal” license assignment when licensing entities as per the available entitlements. For example: SAM Pro will determine the most cost-effective license assignment to a specific host or virtual machine as per available SQL Server Standard or Enterprise entitlements available. More on cost effective license assignment for Microsoft SQL server here.
However, this blog is focused on Allocations Management. Allocations is a way for SAM Pro customers to prioritize license assignment for specific hosts, virtual machines, users, devices etc. as per the organization’s licensing strategy. It is a way to “override” ServiceNow SAM Pro’s own license assignment. More on the difference between License Optimization and Allocation here.
SAM Pro honors the license allocation asked by customers and would effectively give more priority to assign licenses to those entities.
This can be done in several ways. We will check a few scenarios and understand how SAM Pro customers can use allocation effectively.
Use Case 1:
SAM Manager looks at the License consumption of a particular entity- Cluster A- VM 13 and checks that it has been consumed by SQL Server Standard by ServiceNow SAM Pro.
We can also check that the Software installed on this virtual machine is SQL server standard.
However, as per the organization’s licensing strategy they would want to assign/prioritize license assignment of SQL Server Enterprise to this entity. Hence, the SAM Manager/admin can add allocation to the SQL Server Enterprise Entitlement- this will allocate SQL Server Enterprise Licenses to the entity.
Please note that the customer does not need to “remember” the quantity of licenses to allocate. SAM Pro will automatically determine the licenses required for that entity. Hence, the SAM Manager/admin can just add a quantity of 1.
After reconciliation run, we can observe that Cluster A- VM 13 consumed licenses from SQL Server Enterprise. Also, observe that it consumed 4 rights wherein we have allocated 1 only. This is because the product can automatically figure out the number of licenses required for an entity.
In addition, you can check the Allocated in use field to confirm that indeed the allocations added were consumed. You can pull in fields such as Allocated in use, Not allocated in use, allocated not in use, allocations needed – this will help understand the context with more detail if required. More on these fields here .
Also, check the VM- on the software installation list you will find the Software Model Result which clearly confirm that the software install is SQL Server Standard however as per software model result- the entity is consumed by SQL Server Enterprise software model.
Please note that this use cases of prioritizing few entities to consume a particular license over other can be extended to many other use cases such as prioritizing suites to consume license first, license a particular device with another license metric over other etc.
Use Case 2:
The SAM Manager is quite happy with the assignment of license consumption performed by ServiceNow SAM Pro automatically.
Using the create allocation remediation option the SAM Manager can essentially lock these “assignments” so that in future reconciliation runs – the license consumption happens exactly as performed earlier.
We can check that there are 2 remediation options created- create allocation and remove unallocated installs. You will see that when the Not allocated in use field has values then these 2 remediation options show up.
Click on Create allocations and thereby click on Create all allocations. This will create allocations for all entities (device/user) mentioned.
The allocation will be added to the entitlement immediately after performing the remediation action .
If you would want to create allocation on only some entities, you can create allocation on the individual entity (user/device). This can be accomplished by clicking on the remediation option – create allocation->License required -> and click on the number link-> and then click on the button Create Allocation.
Use Case 3:
The SAM Manager has incorrectly allocated more rights than required or added a wrong allocation. For example, allocated hosts to license SQL Server Standard core licenses.
ServiceNow SAM Pro automatically creates Remove allocation remediation option to remove these unnecessary or incorrect allocations.
For example: Cluster A VM 16 requires just 4 rights. However, by mistake suppose about 20 licenses are allocated- then the product would automatically generate remove allocations remediation option to remove those unnecessary allocations.20 rights of SQL Server Enterprise licenses assigned to the Virtual machine entity.
After Reconciliation, checking results- we can see that ServiceNow SAM Pro has correctly generated the Remediation Option- Remove allocation to remove those 16 unwanted allocations. This provides error handling support to SAM Professional to remove their incorrect allocations.
For more details, you can check the “Allocated Not in use” field which clearly also shows that 16 rights are allocated but not used and wasted.
Click on Remove allocations remediation option to remove all these unwanted allocations automatically. As mentioned above, you can also individually remove allocations.
Use Case 4:
SAM manager is creating a new entitlement and wants to have the same allocation strategy as a previous entitlement.
The SAM Manager can use the Copy Allocation feature to achieve that. More on this feature here. Please note that this is a new feature in Vancouver Release.
Click on Copy Allocations and select the Entitlement from which you intend to copy.
Thereby select all or select the required allocation from the source allocation tab. Click on Submit.
You can see that all the allocations have been successfully copied over to the new entitlement.
Use Case 5:
SAM Manager wants to restrict License consumption to few entities such as cost center, department etc. Through this feature SAM Manager can restrict license consumption. More on this here. This feature is similar to allocations but provides more flexibility.
Create a consumption rule to restrict license consumption to IT Department only.
Link the consumption rule to the Entitlement, mention the License Pool requirement which is the reservation of rights to a group entity.
You can check that only entities or devices of Department IT were considered for license consumption.
If you want the consumption to happen for other entities after the License consumption in Department IT is finished, you can set the flag “Unrestricted consumption” on the software entitlement.
Some Important Points for consideration
- No need to add allocation to user subscription products such as M365
- Allocations are required for few license metrics such as per named user or per named device
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