FlexNet Manager Suite
2024 R1
(On-Premises)
The batch scheduler provides some useful specializations for handling third-party
inventory imports from disconnected inventory beacons (those that are not co-located on your central
application server, or batch server in a multi-server
implementation). The purpose of these specializations is to make third-party inventory
results available in the web interface as promptly as possible.
Third-party inventory processing overview:
-
An inventory beacon collects inventory from a third-party tool
(such as Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM) or IBM's ILMT).
-
The inventory data package is saved with an XML manifest that identifies the
connection used for the inventory import (both by the name you defined for the
connection, and by a GUID tying the connection to the particular inventory beacon).
-
From a free-standing inventory beacon,
the inventory package is immediately uploaded to a web service on the central
application server (or the batch server in a large
implementation with separate servers).
-
The web service queues an
InventoryImportReaders
message to
the batch scheduler. (Details of task messages are included in Batch Scheduler Command Line.)
-
The reader task is scheduled as soon as constraints and current tasks allow,
resulting in the third-party inventory reaching the internal staging
tables.
Note: If the third-party inventory collection is configured on an inventory beacon that is co-located on your central application server (or, in a large multi-server implementation, on your
inventory server), the third-party inventory collection is scheduled by a
Microsoft scheduled task on the server and saved directly to the staging
tables. This is automatically followed by the staging of any FlexNet
inventory, and then the remaining step follows.
-
After the success of that task, by default the batch scheduler queues an
InventoryImportWriters
message so that the data is also
transferred into the operational tables in the compliance database.
This chaining of the writer task is controlled by another specialized option
on the command line of the batch
scheduler:
-p "ChainWritersMessage=true"
The value of this
Boolean is derived from a per-tenant setting in the database, called
PackageUploadTriggersWriters
(stored in the
ComplianceTenantSetting
table).
Tip: The same setting may be used in a single-tenant
on-premises implementation.
Its effect when true is to cause the batch
scheduler to queue tasks for the compliance writers immediately on the success
of the import readers task. These not only transfer the inventory to the
operational tables in the
compliance database, but also complete a new
calculation of license consumption (reconciliation) based on this latest data.
Therefore the inventory, and its impact on licensing, are available as quickly
as possible in the
web interface of
FlexNet Manager Suite.
Tip: In some cases where you import a large data set, the impact of an
immediate import and reconciliation may be undesirable. You may turn off
this feature (so that you rely only on the scheduled overnight import and
reconciliation) by setting
PackageUploadTriggersWriters
to
false. There is no user interface for editing the preferences saved in the
ComplianceTenantSetting
table (this table is used both
for multi-tenant and single-tenant implementations); but a database
administrator may make the following change in Microsoft SQL Server
Management Studio:
UPDATE ComplianceTenantSetting
SET SettingValue = '0'
FROM dbo.ComplianceTenantSetting
INNER JOIN dbo.SettingName ON
ComplianceTenantSetting.SettingNameID = SettingName.SettingNameID
WHERE SettingName.Name = 'PackageUploadTriggersWriters'
Further
details of the
ComplianceTenantSetting
and
SettingName
tables are available in
FlexNet Manager Suite Schema Reference.
While you can chain the writers for all inventory sources, it doesn't have the same
impact when used in the case of inventory collected by FlexNet Inventory Agent. This
is because the individual .ndi
files have over time been uploaded
into the internal inventory database, and there is no equivalent "instant trigger"
to cause this data source to be 'immediately' written into the compliance database (really, 'immediately' has no useful meaning when
.ndi
files continue to be uploaded to the inventory database at
relatively random times).
In contrast, for third-party inventory, the specialized process described above means
that third-party inventory is available in the web interface of FlexNet Manager Suite as promptly as possible after it is collected by an inventory beacon.
FlexNet Manager Suite (On-Premises)
2024 R1