Best Practice for Dealing with Duplicate Software Models

[Matt Saccento]

I've got a lot of duplicate software models. Usually this creates an issue on the workbench, but sometimes, to my surprise, everything appears to be reporting correctly (they're all "license under management"). So a few questions:

• Is it OK to have multiple software models for the same thing? Is it actually able to reconcile data from multiple software models correctly?
• Is it best practice to have a single model?
• If we want to eliminate the duplicates, what the best way to go about that?
• Combine all the info into a one model and delete the others?
• Just uncheck the "license under management" box on the duplicates?

Thanks, Matt

[Daniel Slocum]

Hello Matt,

Duplicate Models for the same product are ok if you are tracking the version and edition separately. In this case, you'd select a Discovery Map or configure the related Version Condition, Edition Condition, Platform Condition attributes to reflect the different versions of the software product.

If you want to combine versions into one overarching software model that will cover any version/edition/platform in your environment then first you need to be sure your entitlement terms and conditions allow for that.  Then, secondly, you'd want just one software model per product. Deletion of a software model is just fine but you might need to recreate software entitlement records so you can relate them to the software model you choose to keep.  It is also ok to uncheck the License Under Management checkbox, but that could leave your instance cluttered with dupes that could be accidentally linked to new entitlements by SAM users. 

Daniel

[vishakcaag]

@Daniel Slocum We have same software model name with different PPN and different Rights i.e downgrade and upgrade. can we merge that?

[ritahester]

I have a similar situation but there duplicate models with the same version/edition. See list below. All have at least one entitlement linked to it. In this situation, what would the best approach to cleaning it up be? My client would prefer to have single entries for the model/version/edition.

Thank you for your advise.

[Daniel Slocum]

Hello Rita,

Please take a look at the SAM Properties that creates software models. If on, you'll want to turn them off to preclude auto-creation of new SW Models after you clean this up.

I would ask the customer which of these models they'd like to utilize, then create all of the SW entitlements for a given product/version/edition under the SW model the customer chose to keep, delete unneeded SW entitlements from the unwanted SW models, then delete the unwanted SW Models.

Key to keeping this from happening again, is being sure auto-create SW Models system properties are off and SW Models are created as much as possible through the Content Library's automation that triggers when a Publisher Part Number is entered into a Software Entitlement record.