Two Ways to Collect Inventory

FlexNet Manager Suite 2023 R1 (On-Premises)

Like all license consumption calculations, sub-capacity licensing using IBM PVU or IBM VPC licenses relies on incoming software and hardware inventory. IBM authorizes any of the following approaches:

• Collect inventory using the FlexNet inventory agent, and under tightly-prescribed conditions, import into FlexNet Manager Suite which performs the sub-capacity calculations and provides appropriate reporting. This approach is available for either IBM VPC or IBM PVU licenses.
• Collect inventory using ILMT under similar conditions (such as inventory collection every 30 minutes), allowing ILMT to perform the sub-capacity calculations and resultant reporting; and then import the product consumption into FlexNet Manager Suite to achieve a 'single pane of glass' for compliance management. The import of license consumption results from ILMT is supported only for IBM PVU licenses.
• Use either product for full capacity licensing, usually with the resultant increase in licensing costs. This option is not investigated further in this chapter, which focuses entirely on your options for sub-capacity licensing.

The following table highlights the different requirements for the two approaches to sub-capacity licensing.

Requirement	FlexNet Manager Suite	ILMT
Licensing	Use a current version of FlexNet Manager Suite. Note: IBM approval requires that you are using a version later than 2015 R1. You are currently reading documentation for release 2023 R1. Be sure that you have licensed the FlexNet Manager for Datacenters product.	ILMT is licensed. If using IBM Db2 as the underlying database, assign a commercial Db2 license to ILMT, rather than using Db2 Community Edition, or the free Db2 bundled with ILMT, or similar. (Microsoft SQL Server may be used as an alternative database, and this of course also requires a commercial license.) Use a current version of FlexNet Manager Suite. Be sure that you have licensed the FlexNet Manager for Datacenters product. (This supports the IBM PVU license type and appropriate reporting.)
Approval	Obtain a contractual variation from IBM to modify the IBM PVU and IBM VPC licenses, allowing the substitution of FlexNet Manager Suite for ILMT. (A standard application form is available.)	The standard IBM PVU or IBM VPC licenses apply.
Agents	Install the FlexNet inventory agent on all application servers running software under either IBM PVU or IBM VPC licenses; and also on any Hyper-V hosts that may have guest VMs running software licensed under IBM PVU or IBM VPC.	Install the ILMT agent on all application servers running software under IBM PVU or IBM VPC licenses.
Drivers	Nothing additional required.	Where ILMT is using a Db2 back-end, install a Db2 driver on each applicable inventory beacon. (No separate driver is required for an underlying Microsoft SQL Server database.)
Credentials	Normal requirements for the installed FlexNet inventory agents. Additional credentials may be required (as usual) for inventory collection from VMware virtual hosts.	Create an account in the database (either Db2 or SQL Server) for data collection. Tip: This account requires the DATAACCESS privilege level.
Configuration	Configure FlexNet inventory agent to collect the relevant data every 30 minutes.	The standard ILMT configuration collects data every 30 minutes.
FlexNet Beacon	Normal operation for data uploads from the FlexNet inventory agents to the central application server.	Remote data collection by the inventory beacon.
License management	Licenses can be entirely managed in FlexNet Manager Suite, using all your normal processes.	Product consumption for IBM PVU licenses calculated in ILMT may be imported into FlexNet Manager Suite, which automatically creates license records to match the consumption data from ILMT. You may then attach purchases to the licenses to automatically compare consumption against entitlements and determine your compliance status. Remember: For IBM VPC licenses, in contrast, there is no way to import any license consumption results from ILMT into FlexNet Manager Suite.

There are following sections that provide guidance through the processes required for each of these methods. In both cases, we assume that you have already licensed the appropriate products, and proceed from there. Either method may be used independently and without reference to the other, starting from a fresh implementation.

However, the more common scenario is that you may have ILMT already operational, and you wish to transition to using FlexNet Manager Suite for sub-capacity IBM PVU and VPC license calculations. Since the descriptions of the independent approaches overlap with description of the transition, we start with an understanding of the transition process. If this is not relevant to you, you can skip directly to whichever approach you have chosen to use.