Operation Using ILMT

FlexNet Manager Suite 2021 R1 (On-Premises)
This topic describes integration with ILMT specifically for IBM PVU licenses, where results from ILMT can be imported into FlexNet Manager Suite. (There is no equivalent import of license consumption calculations from ILMT for IBM VPC licenses.)
Note: ILMT may operate with either an IBM Db2 back end, or a Microsoft SQL Server database. In the first of these cases (Db2), integration between FlexNet Manager Suite and ILMT normally requires that you hold a commercial (paid) license for the underlying Db2 database. Your license from IBM has to be sufficient to allow third-party access to the database. Suitable examples include Db2 Workgroup Server Edition, or (for advanced features of Db2) Db2 Enterprise Server Edition, or Advanced Enterprise Server Edition. The free, bundled Db2 license for ILMT does not include these third-party access rights.
When you are using ILMT as the calculator and reporter for sub-capacity consumption of IBM PVU licenses, the majority of your effort is in ILMT (deploying the ILMT agent, potentially licensing a commercial version of Db2, and so on), for which see the documentation from IBM. The integration of the two systems, in summary, is as follows:
  1. According to your configuration of ILMT, the ILMT agent collects inventory regularly, and ILMT tracks your historical and peak consumption for all relevant products.
  2. Using an inventory beacon, you configure a connection to your ILMT database, using an account with DATAACCESS privileges. On the schedule you configure, FlexNet Manager Suite collects a full set of data from ILMT into the staging tables of the compliance database.
    Information collected and calculated by ILMT (and subsequently imported as finished data into FlexNet Manager Suite) includes:
    • Inventory evidence
    • Software titles (or, in the terminology used for FlexNet Manager Suite, applications, including bundles)
    • Inventory devices running the licensed software
    • The points consumed by these devices for the software.
    Note: In this scenario, ILMT performs all required high-frequency hardware tracking, and typically reviews the data and updates peak consumption calculations only once a day. Therefore the import from ILMT to FlexNet Manager Suite does not need to be a high-frequency action: typically, a daily import of the ILMT results is all that is required.
  3. Honoring your configuration in the inventory Settings page to make ILMT the source of truth for IBM PVU sub-capacity licensing (that is, the Enable frequent hardware scanning for IBM sub-capacity license calculations is not selected), at the next full license reconciliation FlexNet Manager Suite provides special behaviors:
    • It imports the ILMT data from the staging tables, and integrates it for presentation within your overall inventory and license compliance picture.
      Tip: ILMT keeps records of all your inventory devices since records began, including all those that have been marked as 'deleted' at any time in the past. While all of these records are available to your ILMT connector, FlexNet Manager Suite imports only newly-deleted devices: that is, those that were marked as deleted within the last 90 days, and which may therefore be contributing to the calculation of peak consumption in the current reporting period. Once the rolling 90-day window passes the date when a particular device was marked as deleted, it is no longer imported; and since it "disappears" from all inventory sources, the equivalent record within FlexNet Manager Suite is also removed.
    • FlexNet Manager Suite creates IBM PVU license records that replicate the consumption data imported from ILMT. One way to identify license records created in this way is to check the History tab of the license properties, where the Created by field displays the operator name followed by (Auto generated).
      Note: FlexNet Manager Suite does not recalculate individual device consumption imported from ILMT on these licenses, but simply attaches the values calculated by ILMT. In addition, any manual entry in the Overridden consumption column (on the Consumption tab of the license properties) is ignored for rows where Calculated by displays ILMT. Think of this as a "copy/paste" operation from ILMT into the license properties in FlexNet Manager Suite — nothing changes the PVU consumption figures calculated by, and imported from, ILMT for each individual inventory device. However, the total consumption recorded for all inventory devices linked to the license record is calculated within FlexNet Manager Suite as a simple sum.
    • FlexNet Manager Suite may also create or update other records as required to keep data aligned. For example, if an application is reported from ILMT that has not previously been identified from inventory within your enterprise (and the application exists in the Application Recognition Library [ARL]), an application record is linked to the license on import.
      Note: Applications must exist in the ARL, or matching records must have been previously created within your enterprise, for those applications to be automatically linked to the automatically-created licenses. Where ILMT is the only source of information about an application, that application is not reproduced within FlexNet Manager Suite. You may request that such an application be added to the ARL. In another example of 'live' license records, if you download an updated ARL that now contains the newly-added application record, and subsequently import again from ILMT, the previously-missing application is now automatically linked to the existing license record.
    Important: Licenses automatically created from an ILMT import are still 'live' license records that can change, just like all others. It is therefore possible for undesirable changes to be made to these license records, with confusing results. Such undesirable changes may occur automatically, or as a result of manual action. As examples:
    • Automatic change: Remember that the license is created to show the consumption results for individual inventory devices imported from ILMT. (You can identify the imported devices on the Consumption tab of the license properties by adding the Calculated by column, which displays ILMT for these devices.) However, because this is still a 'live' license, it is possible for an inventory device that is not imported from ILMT to become attached, if this auto-generated license provides the best fit for its installation data. (For this non-imported device, the Calculated by column displays Internal.) Naturally, if extra device(s) get attached to the license, this increases the total consumption on the license:
      • The consumption figures for individual inventory devices imported from ILMT remain the same as recorded in ILMT
      • The extra Internal device adds its own consumption figure to the total result as well, so that the total license consumption shown in FlexNet Manager Suite is now greater than the consumption shown in ILMT.
      If this automatic change occurs and is not what you want, you can correct it in either of two ways:
      • Identify the rogue Internal device that has the licensed software installed but is not being managed by ILMT, and move it into management by ILMT
      • If you have some reason for excluding the device(s) with Internal calculations from management by ILMT, create a clone license with a changed name (for example, adding from FNMS inventory to the license name), and use group assignments or individual allocations to prioritize these non-ILMT devices onto this separate license record.
    • Manual change: As an example of a manual change with undesirable, confusing outcomes, an operator may mistakenly apply an exemption within FlexNet Manager Suite to an inventory device imported from ILMT. Remembering that the consumption is being calculated only in ILMT, it follows that, if you need to add an exemption to an inventory device, you must apply the exemption in ILMT, your chosen source of truth. For each device where inventory is imported from ILMT, four figures are recorded internally within FlexNet Manager Suite for each installed application:
      • The full capacity and sub-capacity points currently consumed by the installation (in the latest import). The sub-capacity figure is selected whenever the device is eligible, and otherwise the full capacity figure is used. The selected current consumption for each device is what is displayed on the Consumption tab of the IBM PVU license created to track consumption for this application. If you apply an exemption to such a device within FlexNet Manager Suite, the exemption does not affect this current consumption (as you can observe by the unchanged total consumption shown on that tab).
      • The maximum full capacity and sub-capacity points historically consumed by the installation. These points are totaled and displayed in the Compliance tab of the license. Once again, any exemption within FlexNet Manager Suite for a device does not affect the historical consumption imported from ILMT at all.

      Best practice (when ILMT is your chosen source of truth) is to make such configuration changes only in ILMT. If someone has mistakenly applied an exemption within FlexNet Manager Suite, copy the exemption into ILMT, and remove it from FlexNet Manager Suite. The next import into FlexNet Manager Suite causes the records there to be updated appropriately, because devices exempted in ILMT export an individual consumption figure of zero, and the peak consumption figures are also adjusted appropriately. (The exemption settings themselves are also imported from ILMT, and are automatically displayed in FlexNet Manager Suite as Covered by related product for the appropriate devices in the Consumption tab of the license properties. If you are transitioning from ILMT to FlexNet Manager Suite, you will use these exemptions as the basis for setting your own exemptions within FlexNet Manager Suite, as detailed in Additional Transition Steps.)

  4. After each import from ILMT and the subsequent full license reconciliation, FlexNet Manager Suite displays the latest Peak consumed figure in the Compliance tab of license properties, and reflects this value in the Consumed column of license listings.
    Tip: While listings of separate licenses correctly use the peak consumption as the total for each license, the consumption for each individual device displayed in the Consumption tab of the license properties is its current value calculated at the last full reconciliation, regardless of any peak to which the device may have contributed at some other time.
    While uncommon, it is possible for the peak consumption calculated by ILMT to go down: for example if, in ILMT, you add an exemption for a server. For each change in points calculated by ILMT (whether up or down), the ILMT import to FlexNet Manager Suite and subsequent reconciliation update the Peak consumed figure in the license properties to take account of the ILMT results. However, keep in mind that the value displayed in FlexNet Manager Suite may be the sum of the sub-capacity value calculated by ILMT and some full capacity results calculated from other inventory sources. When there are no other inventory sources, the Peak consumed figure matches the latest peak points imported from ILMT.
  5. While ILMT remains the source of truth for sub-capacity calculations, regularly archive reports from ILMT for submission to IBM.

FlexNet Manager Suite (On-Premises)

2021 R1