AWS EC2 Connector

FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 (On-Premises)

This part introduces the AWS EC2 connector, with a particular focus on managing licenses that you provide for software used in the cloud (often called "bring your own software license", or BYOSL). The complementary case, where you purchase instances fully provisioned by AWS (including the provision of relevant licenses), is of less interest to your license management team, and is perhaps more the focus of your finance team.

The AWS EC2 connector is only a part of a complete BYOSL management strategy for instances (typically, virtual machines that are tracked as inventory devices) that are hosted for you by this cloud service provider. By itself, the AWS EC2 connector does not gather sufficient data to allow for license management: for example, it does not gather software inventory for the applications that are running on your cloud-hosted devices.

For that reason, this part covers more than the AWS EC2 connector itself. As well as details of prerequisites, set up, and data gathering with the AWS EC2 connector, the part includes some insights into:

• Processes for gathering complete hardware and software inventory for your cloud-based instances
• Considerations for license management
• Preparing different Amazon Machine Images (AMI) from which to launch instances capable of reporting software and hardware inventory.

In fact, using those guidelines, you could configure inventory gathering in AWS EC2 without using the AWS EC2 connector at all. Provided that you are deploying the latest FlexNet inventory agent (13.2.x or later), inventory alone even returns the cloud service provider. What the AWS EC2 connector adds is:

• Automatically setting the Hosted in property in the inventory device records created when inventory is returned
• Adding the cloud service provider and instance details when these are missing from inventory collected by legacy versions of FlexNet inventory agent, or from third-party inventory sources
• Populating the Cloud Service Provider Inventory page with records of instances currently running in your AWS EC2 environment, including a few properties that are additional to the normal hardware and software inventory
• Importing permanent records of instances that were previously running but that have now been terminated (and for which, as a result, any prior inventory devices records have now been deleted)
• Triggering automatic deletion (completed at the next full import and compliance calculation) of any inventory device record linked to an instance that is now terminated.

This part focuses on background about the AWS EC2 connector, and additional material you need in order to build license management around the AWS EC2 connector. You will not find details about how to choose the right connection method for your business processes (there are three method available), or how to undertake the actual connection here. Instead, step-by-step instructions for configuring the connection to AWS ECS are available on the online help at FlexNet Manager Suite Online Help > Inventory Beacon Help > Inventory Systems Page > Connecting to External Inventory Systems > Managing PowerShell Connections > Managing AWS EC2 Connections.