Archived Inventory

This page is relevant only when you are authorized by IBM to use IT Asset Management in place of ILMT for sub- capacity calculations of PVU points on IBM PVU licenses, and have configured IT Asset Management for that purpose (placing it in 'PVU mode' or 'high frequency mode', for which see IBM High-Frequency Scanning). At all other times, the page remains empty.

When active, this page lists all inventory devices that have a status value of Archived. These devices do not appear in other views of inventory devices—they remain visible only:

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In this page

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In the Consumption tabs of any IBM PVU licenses for software that was installed on these devices—including in the search results for inventory devices that you may want to link to the license by allocation

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In any IBM PVU License Consumption report covering any time when the archived inventory device was active.

The Archived status is assigned automatically when an attempt is made to delete the inventory device record, but it is still required for its historical contributions to sub-capacity points consumption for one or more IBM PVU licenses. The attempt to delete the inventory device record may happen either automatically or through an operator's manual action:

Methods to Archive an Inventory Item

Methods

Description

Automatically

An inventory item is automatically archived in either of these cases:

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When the inventory device has disappeared from all inventory sources (most critically, from the FlexNet inventory that must be uploaded from the locally-installed Inventory Agent in order to fulfill IBM's conditions on the extended IBM PVU license agreement)

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When the (last) compliance connection from which inventory for this device is imported is deleted from the Inventory Data tab of the Data Imports page.

Manually

An inventory item can be manually archived by selecting the device in a listing, and clicking Delete.

Although discovered devices and inventory devices are separate records, the normal process when you delete a discovered device is to also delete its linked inventory device record (as long as it is not restored by future inventory imports).

In the special case where the linked inventory device is also linked to an IBM PVU license, the two linked records are treated differently:

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The discovered device record is deleted, as is your intention

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The inventory device record is set to Archived so that it remains available for historical consumption recalculations.

There are other behavioral similarities and differences between deleting a device and archiving a device.

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Deletion—When an inventory device that is a virtual host is deleted, all its guest virtual machines are also deleted. In the inverse case, when an inventory device that is a virtual machine is deleted, its link to the virtual host is lost (although the host record itself is not deleted).

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Archiving—When an inventory device that is a virtual host is archived, all its guest virtual machines are also archived. In the inverse case, when an inventory device that is a virtual machine is archived (but its host is not), its link to the virtual host is maintained, so that it can continue to contribute to the licensing calculations for the host.

When an inventory device is archived, all records of current installed applications are removed from it, and only historical records of applications linked to IBM PVU licenses are retained. An archived device cannot have licenses other than IBM PVU allocated to it.

While an inventory device is Archived, it takes no part in any license consumption calculations other than its historical impact on IBM PVU consumption. To all intents and purposes, it is as if it has already been deleted, except for its historical contribution to IBM PVU license consumption.

The status of Archived devices is reassessed at each full inventory import and compliance calculation, which by default occurs nightly. As soon as the inventory device's historical records are no longer required (that is, when they fall outside the data retention period, for which see IT Asset Management Settings: Licensing Tab), those PVU details are removed, and the inventory device record is itself finally and automatically deleted.

Tip:If an inventory device that is Archived is unexpectedly matched in incoming inventory—that is, the device somehow reappears—then its status is automatically switched from Archived back to Active, and it disappears from this listing and is once again available in the All Inventory page. Most of the time, though, a device disappears from this listing because it has finally been deleted.

In summary, then, inventory devices with a status of Archived are scheduled for deletion as soon as their historical records are no longer required for IBM PVU license consumption calculations.

You can perform the following actions on this page:

Archived Inventory Actions
Action	Description
View or change the properties of an archived inventory device	Click the hyperlinked name of the device, or select the appropriate row and click Open. The properties of the inventory device remain editable (other than its Status) so that you may correct any device settings that influence PVU points consumption when the reporting period is reassessed (as happens with each full compliance calculation). Tip:This is the only view that allows you to open the properties for an archived device. Also notice that the Status column available in other views of inventory devices is not present in this listing, since every device here by definition has a status value of Archived.

Properties Displayed on the Archived Inventory Page

For detailed information on the properties displayed in this list, see Inventory Listings Property Reference.

Note:Most lists in IT Asset Management only show a selection of the properties in the underlying database. Some columns are displayed by default and others can be displayed using the column chooser control, including any custom properties that you have added. For information on using the column chooser, see Managing Columns in a Table.