How to manage allocation of volume license key

Brigham · ‎08-20-2020

In SAM Pro: Orlando there are License Key records related to a SW Entitlement. This allows for a 1:1 allocation of a license key to a User or Device. My question is around what to do with volume license keys where a single key allows rights to allocate to 10, 100 or even 1000 Users/Devices to a single license key?

Is the best practice to create 10, 100 or 1000 copies of the License Key under the SW Entitlement? That seems like poor use of time.

ServiceNow will allow manual allocation of a single License Key to multiple Users/Devices, but I am wondering about future automation when we hope to have ServiceNow ingest a request for a SW License, system will seek available licenses and if available make the allocation. If the license key allows multiple allocations, it will still show Allocated = TRUE after the first allocation.

What are others in the community doing? What is best practice?

Thanks!

Fabian Kunzke · ‎08-21-2020

Thanks to @Daniel Slocum for catching an error in belows answer: The documentation links are mixed between the SAM application and the "base" ITSM Asset management. The following answer may lead to confusing results. For a better and more in depth answer take a look at Daniels answer.

For consitency, the original - yet incorrect answer - posted below the line.

This is the line ------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

Generally speaking you have to distinguish between license entitlements and license assets. A license asset itself (Link to the documentation) contains the info about how many license entitlements are covered by this asset. A license entitlement (Link to the documentation) itself "consumes" a license by referencing either to a user (being a user license entitlement) or a computer (hardware license entitlement).

In short:

For a volume license key create a license asset. Then, for every asset or user covered by this license, create one license entitlement.

This is important for mulitple reasons: You license assets amount (the volume) can be increased over time. You don't want/have to create multiple assets every time you increase that volume (although that can be an advantage many don't do it based on the managability). Further, the SAM reporting revolves around the "Asset vs. Entitlement" count. And: with SAM in place rulesets automatically check, if your allocations are accurate or not (Link to the documentation).

IMPORTANT:

This is true for Orlando. Madrid has a previous version of the Software Asset Mangement where Software entitlements and entitlements allocations are used instead (Link to the documentation).

Regards

Fabian

Brigham · ‎08-21-2020

Hi Fabian,

Thank you for the reply and links. In my opinion ServiceNow has done a poor job keeping this clear as they evolve the SAM discipline. You mention a 'License Asset' which within ServiceNow is called 'Software Entitlement' stored in [alm_license]. You also reference a 'License Entitlement' [alm_entitlement_user or alm_entitlement_device] that can be created directly from the 'License Entitlements' tab of the 'Software Entitlement' record form, or is automatically created when the Asset Manager creates a 'User Allocation' or 'Device Allocation' from the User/Device Allocations tab on that same Software Entitlement record form.

That said, the Software Entitlement record also has a 'License Keys' tab where the specific license key(s) are kept for that specific Software Entitlement which can have one or more License Keys [samp_sw_license_key]. A volume license would likely have a single License Key (1234-5678-abcd-efgh) which could be allocated for use by multiple Users or Devices.

License Key records can be associated with a License Entitlement which specifies a User or Device with rights to use that particular License Key.

If my Software Entitlement indicates I have Purchased Rights = 10 under a single License Key, I will be creating up to 10 License Entitlement records, one for each User or Device covered by that Software Entitlement.

I understand that to fully utilize this Software Entitlement, I need to create 10 License Entitlement records. My question is what is the best practice in this case with regard to the License Key?

Create 10 License Key records each with the exact same license key string (1234-5678-abcd-efgh) and relate each individual License Key to each License Entitlement
Create a single License Key record (1234-5678-abcd-efgh) and relate that single License Key to all of my License Entitlements under that Software Entitlement
something else

The challenge with option 2 is that in my mind, as we head toward automation of allocation of License Entitlements, the License Key will be flagged Is Allocated = TRUE after the first License Entitlement is created. Is this a problem?

The challenge with option 1 is that it creates an excess of work, generating 10, 100 or 10,000 duplicate License Key records.

Fabian Kunzke · ‎08-23-2020

Hi,

I totally agree. For me it is confusing as well. Thanks for the additional explaination.

I personally (NOTE: this may not be best practice) would ask the question where the key belongs:

1) The installation of one software -> then it should relate to the entitlement
2) The software itself (e.g. an buy once, use for all) -> the software record
3) To the user -> relate to the user entitlement
4) To a volume -> relate to the alm_license (the volume)

In your case 4) applies. To me this would be the easiest and clearest way. As far as i understand the reality of the volume license is:

I have a volume of 10 "entitlements". This volume is related to one key. Therefore:
- one alm_lincense with one key
- up to 10 license entitlements

Let's say 10 is not enough and you order another key of 10:
- same alm_license record now with two keys
- up to 20 license entitlements

When would i not do this: If (for whatever reason) you NEED to know which entitlement is covered by which key (in the second case you could no longer do this), then is would suggest having one alm_license record per key. I do not think the additional upkeep cost of connecting entilements directly to keys is worth it.

I hope this helps a bit. To me it is similar to third party contracts and warranty extensions covering assets, which is where the above mentioned steps come from. And i like to keep things similar to one another (this allows me to reuse the reporting for contracts within SAM as well and thus align the event management and such as the system rules for licenses and contract government are now mostly the same). Please keep in mind, that this is how i would do it, which implies the fact that a) it may not be the best way to do it and b) it may not apply well to your use case. (just a handy dandy disclaimer)

Thanks for the challenging insights.

Regards

Fabian

Daniel Slocum · ‎08-25-2020

Hi Brigham,

@Fabian Kunzke has inadvertently linked you to two different SAM applications in his documentation links. The documentation can be a bit confusing so the error is fully understandable.

In releases prior to Jakarta, there was just one SAM product available and that product was bundled with an ITSM subscription. We've purposely carried that documentation through all of our subsequent releases for customers still using that product. The second set of documentation Fabian pointed you to, is for that original product. The way to quickly identify it as such is that the ITSM SAM product utilizes Counters to determine a license position.

This section from Fabian's reply references the ITSM SAM documentation which is for our product pre-Jakarta release. "This is true for Orlando. Madrid has a previous version of the Software Asset Mangement where Software entitlements and entitlements allocations are used instead (Link to the documentation)."

In Jakarta we introduced Software Asset Management with a plugin name entitled Software Asset Managemnt Professional. Most customers now just call the new product SAMP or SAM Professional. That product has been improved release to release but the functionality you are asking about has not changed since that first Jakarta release. There is just the 1:1 relationship of Key to Allocation. I would suggest you add an Idea to the Idea portal requesting a mechanism be added to SAMP that would allow a single key to be linked to multiple allocations without the need to create 100 or more individual duplicate key records.

Hope that answers your question.

I'd like to add a bit more clarification on our documentation. We added yet another SAM product called SAM Foundations in our London release. SAM Foundations has a subset of the SAM Pro functionality and utilizes the same reconciliation engine as SAM Pro. The primary differences are in a lackof some automation and availability of some of the Content Library included in SAM Pro.

Here are the distinct Paris landing pages for documentation for the three distinct products. Since you are a SAM Pro customer, you'll want to avoid referring to documentation for the other two products.

ITSM SAM. SAM Foundations. SAM Professional