Oracle Database inventory in Amazon RDS for BYOL

FlexNet Manager Suite version 2020 R2.3

The Amazon connector supplied with every inventory beacon has been radically updated with this release. While the method of using the connector has not changed, it now does much more than collecting data on Amazon EC2 instances. It also now automatically collects listener and services information on instances of Oracle Database running in Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). When this information is uploaded to the central application server, FlexNet Manager Suite automatically creates a discovered device record (which allows you to use standard inventory collection rules to take inventory of the related Oracle Database installation), and a linked inventory device record with which to associate the resulting inventory.

For some enterprises, there are multiple Oracle Database installations running in various regions of AWS. To optimize management of your Oracle Database inventory, each inventory beacon (running version 16.3.0 or later of FlexNet Beacon) now has a new Cloud regions tab. In a manner parallel to dedicating an inventory beacon to a particular subnet, the new tab allows you to dedicate a particular inventory beacon to taking Oracle Database inventory from within one (or very few) AWS region(s). This lets you limit load on your network and inventory beacons when the scheduled rule triggers inventory collection from these cloud-based installations of Oracle Database. Each inventory beacon then makes a direct connection to its Oracle Database installation(s) and collects the inventory, ready for inclusion into your nightly archives of reports suitable for Oracle Global Licensing and Advisory Services (GLAS).

This functionality is particularly useful for those using BYOL to license their Oracle Database installations in Amazon RDS – that is, repurposing license entitlements originally purchased to authorize an on-premises installation to now cover an installation hosted by this cloud service provider. It may be of less interest to those using PAYG licensing, where Amazon licenses the software and includes the license cost in the monthly subscription.

For those needing to track license consumption, the upgraded connector even manages to populate the inventory device record with the number of threads dedicated to the virtual machine running the Oracle Database. This count of Threads (or, in Oracle's terms, vCPUs) allows for full license consumption calculations without requiring additional inventory sources to flesh out the remaining hardware (and other software) inventory – a unique capability in the area of direct inventory collection.

Prerequisites and set-up are basically unchanged:

• You use the same processes to configure and run the Amazon connector.
• As for all beacon-driven direct inventory collection from Oracle Database installations, you still register the appropriate Oracle credentials in the Password Manager store on each inventory beacon.
• You still use a Discovery and inventory rule (or an Inventory only) rule to schedule and trigger the direct inventory collection. The inventory is automatically uploaded and included in each night's license consumption calculations.