Prerequisites and Preparations

It is important that you work through each stage of these preparations before commencing your implementation.

Design

Your implementation may have only one central server, or it may have several. You also need to plan for inventory beacons. For details, see Design the Topography.

License

Locate your FlexNet license key, emailed to you from Flexera as part of the order confirmation process, and have it ready for use in the following process.

Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ)

MSMQ is fundamental to process scheduling within FlexNet Manager Suite. If it is already in use within your environment, changes are unlikely. To validate, see details in Enable MTS and MSMQ.

Accounts

For installation and operation, FlexNet Manager Suite requires several different sets of account privileges. You'll find full details in Accounts.

Database instance(s)

All databases for this system require a collation sequence that is both case insensitive and accent sensitive. This means that they should be installed on one or more database instances that a default collation sequence ending with the codes _CI_AS. For details about checking for a collation sequence, see Create Databases.

Configure IIS, .NET and WebDAV

Your implementation will fail if these configurations are not completed correctly. See details in Configure .NET and IIS.

Browser

When Internet Explorer is used on a server-based operating system to access FlexNet Manager Suite after setup is complete (for example, if you are testing from your central application server, or your inventory beacon has a server operating system), the IE enhanced security provisions must be turned off on that server. For details, see Configure Internet Explorer. (Alternatively, use a different browser.)

Check/upgrade PowerShell

Your inventory beacons require at least version 3.0 of PowerShell, and where your circumstances permit, a later version is preferred. Details are in Upgrade PowerShell on Inventory Beacons.

Configure network shares

If you are about to implement a multi-server solution (for example, separating your web application server, batch server, and inventory server), you must configure network shares accessible to all for them to access common data. The requirements and process are in Configure Network Shares for Multi-Server. Conversely, in a single-server implementation, this is not required.

Drivers

If you will ever import spreadsheets in XLSX format, a specific driver type is required. For details, see Drivers for Spreadsheet Imports.

Configure document security

FlexNet Manager Suite allows you to attach uploaded documents to various record-types (including assets, purchases, contracts, and licenses). By default, there is no security scanning of these documents: since they are your own documents, they may be assumed good. However, where greater security is required, you can enable on-demand scanning of every uploaded document. For full details, see the section Preventing Uploads of Malicious Files in the FlexNet Manager Suite System Reference (on-premises edition for release 2020 R2 or later), available through http:/docs.flexera.com in either PDF or HTML format. One part of the security configuration is to set two registry keys with appropriate values: this can be done by script (for a 'silent' or scripted installation), or interactively. For manual or interactive setting, you may choose to put the required values in place during installation, or to wait until installation is completed and configure the registry again later. These settings are mentioned later in the appropriate place in the process, should you choose to include document scanning as part of your initial configuration.

Downloads

Check the FlexNet Manager Suite System Requirements and Compatibility documentation at https://docs.flexera.com/ and validate your topography (server by server). When your design is validated and your hardware is prepared, download the necessary software packages to commence implementation. For details, see Download the Materials.