Inactive computers in the License Workbench results

[ladrake]

Description: Inactive computers are being counted in the License Workbench results. As a result, the software license usage appears to be out of compliance. How do we prevent this from happening?

Steps to reproduce:
1. Go to the License Workbench and click on the TechSmith publisher widget

2. Click on SnagIt

- Notice that all of the versions of Snagit are compliant

- Notice that the Unlicensed Installs list is full of computers that have been retired, missing or in stock

[Daniel Slocum · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Sorry this caught you off guard.  The product doesn't take into account the install_status of the Configuration Item when computing a license position.  Many customers add or edit the status values, or they interpret them differently.  Hardcoding a status to exclude from reconciliation could cause issues with some customers.  Also, we have also seen where a device may be retired, however software is still being discovered.  Customers would want to be aware of devices where statuses are incorrect and still consuming software licenses.  Technically, if software is discoverable on a device, regardless of the status, we would want to make the customer aware that the software is present and potentially consuming licenses.

To help preclude issues, I believe starting in London, the product shipped with Business Rules on the Asset and CI Computer tables that trigger deletion of software installation records when the status or state/substate changes to Retired or Lost/Stolen.  This will preclude software from being counted during reconciliation.

There is also an On-Demand job that can be run “SAM – Remove Installations for retired or stolen configuration items” that will delete software installations from retired/stolen CI’s.  This can be used as a cleanup exercise or when activating SAM for the first time.

A final tactic you can employ is to utilize Software Install Conditions on the SW Model to preclude reconciliation from counting software installations linked to a CI which matches the condition set on the SW Model.  You can choose any value on cmdb_ci_computer or a table dot walkable from that table. 

[michaelalmond]

This is really helpful, thanks.

We have lots of "stale" records in the SW Installation table (i.e. the records exist but the last_scanned date is weeks/months ago.  These steps will certainly help us.

WRT the final suggestion.  We set a condition on our Software Models to say only include installations where the relative date of last_scanned > 30 days ago.  This worked fine apart from the installations that failed this rule just started showing up as unlicensed as they were no longer associated with a Software Model.

1. Is this your experience?

2. If so, is there a workaround?

[Megan Barber]

Hi Daniel,

Is this information still accurate with the San Diego release? I would also like to confirm that if a CI has a state of Lost/Stolen or Retired that it is not counting toward software compliance, just want to make sure I am understanding you correctly!

Thanks!

[Daniel Slocum]

Hi Megan,

Provided the software installations for that CI have been deleted, yes.  However, if the Business Rule has been disabled (installations won't be deleted), or if a discovery source has found the device live on the network (installations will be recreated) then no.  Reconciliation doesn't evaluate the CI state value.  It looks for related sw installation records.  

If you have a reason to keep the sw installation records for a CI that is truly retired, then you'll want to use the com.snc.samp.exclude_device_flag system property to definitively identify CI's to exclude from reconciliation.  The system property can be found in Software Asset->Administration->Properties