Inventory Device Properties / General Tab

You can use this tab either to specify general properties for a new inventory device (see Create an Inventory Device), or to change or override some properties for an existing inventory device. For the existing inventory devices, the changed values may be overwritten by the next inventory collection process (except for values that support manual overriding, which are marked with an asterisk).

Properties

The following inventory device properties (listed alphabetically) are available on this tab.

Property

Description

Category

The operator-defined category of this device. IT Asset Management enables you to create customized categories to logically group inventory devices. These categories are additional to Inventory device type and Device role categorization. For example, you can create categories to differentiate database servers, network servers, or firewalls. The custom categories have no impact on license consumption.

To select a category:

1. Click the Category text box and click Search.
2. Click + to expand the root-level categories (Hardware or Software) to select a category for this device. You may need to expand sub-categories too.
3. Select the check box corresponding to the required category.
4. Click Add category to assign the selected category to this device.

Note:You can click the revert link to change the existing value of this field.

Chassis number

The chassis number assigned to (or reported for) the device. It is a manufacturer-provided identification code that you can use for identification and inventory purposes. For Windows-based computers, it is often displayed on the back of the computer's case, and often the same as the serial number. For UNIX-based computers, you can use system commands similar to getconf MACHINE_SERIAL. For inventory imported from ILMT, this is the Identifying Number reported by ILMT. This identifying number is unique only within the context of a given manufacturer and computer model.

Not available for Mobile Device and Virtual Machine inventory device types.

Compliance status

Indicates the compliance status of this device. The value of this field is a result of the compliance calculations. The value of this field is changed when there is a change in properties that are tracked in the Device compliance settings. See IT Asset Management Settings: Assets Tab.

Select from one of the following status values:

• Changed—Indicates a change in the compliance status of an inventory device. This value is changed automatically when the following conditions are met:
• The inventory device has a linked asset.
• You have defined the device compliance settings to track any changes in the hardware properties of this device.
• There is a change in the hardware properties for which the device compliance settings have been defined. This change can be manual or a result of a new inventory import.
• Compliant—The inventory details reported in the last inventory import match those of previous imports, or any changes to those details have been approved. For details about reviewing or approving changes to assets, see Viewing and Accepting the Changes to a Device Asset.
• New—The default value for all newly imported devices. This value is not changed until there is a change in the hardware configuration or an asset is linked to this device.
• Not tracked—Indicates that the device is no longer tracked for compliance. This may happen when an inventory import leads to a duplicate device record with some change in its properties.

Connection name

The name of the connection through which IT Asset Management received the last inventory data. If you are creating an inventory device manually, the application assigns the value None to this field.

Device role

Specifies the role assigned to a device. Assigning a role may allow for exemptions that limit license consumption for roles specified in some license agreements. Device roles (where permitted by the product use rights on a license) can exempt devices from consuming entitlements on a license to which they are (and remain) attached. For example, some license agreements may grant an exemption for testing devices. For more details, see Allocations and Exemptions.

Important:For IBM PVU licenses only, and only when IT Asset Management is in “PVU mode” and responsible for sub-capacity points calculations: any change to the role of an inventory device that affects its consumption of PVU points is effective retroactively — that is, the change is considered a correction and takes effect throughout the entire reporting period (when PVU points consumption is recalculated as part of the full compliance calculation, which by default happens nightly).

Select from one of the following roles:

• Backup / Archive—This device cannot be started without first restoring it from an archive copy. Typical publisher terminologies include backup, or archival.
• Cold Standby / Disaster Recovery—This device is not currently running, but could be started at any time. Typical publisher terminologies include disaster recovery, cold standby, cold disaster recovery, or failover.
• Development—This device is used exclusively for system development. It does not carry any production load.
• Hot Standby / Active Failover—This device is running, and probably doing work such as mirroring database changes. Typically, this system requires a license, so that it would be unusual to select this role for an exemption. Typical publisher terminologies include hot standby, active, active clusters, mirroring, HA, standby, or remote mirroring.
• Production—Specifies that the device is being used in the production environment, and it consumes license entitlements for its installed software. This is the default value for all newly imported devices, and you need to change it to reflect any other specific role.
• Test—Specifies that the device is being used exclusively in system testing, and does not carry any production load.
• Training—Specifies that the device is being used for training purposes. Most publishers require that this use is exclusive, and may also require that the device is within a dedicated training facility.
• Warm Standby / Passive Failover—This device is on, but is idling and not carrying any production load.

Note:IT Asset Management enables you to configure license consumption exemptions for devices with specific device roles. For example, you can configure the license in such a way that all the devices with Training role should be exempted from license consumption. See Allocations and Exemptions.

Not overwritten by the discovery and inventory process.

Domain name

The name of the domain to which the computing device belongs.

Tip:Displays flexera.com if this is a dummy device record created for imports through your connector to SaaS Management.

Editable in the General tab of the inventory device properties for manually created records. The value is overwritten (permanently) by incoming inventory, and thereafter is read-only.

Firmware serial number

Displays the firmware serial number of an inventory device. This is a unique identification number for an inventory device.

Not editable.

Not available for Mobile Device, Remote Device, or VDI Template inventory device types.

Host ID

Typically displays None, except in a few cases:

• The inventory device is a virtual machine on a host running Solaris, where it effectively displays the "system serial number". This number is not guaranteed to be unique across all SVR4 implementation, and in fact can change over the lifetime of a given system.
• The inventory device is running HP-UX, and is not a vPar partition (and the result depends on the inventory tool).
• The host is running AIX, where it is based on the InternetAddress or HostName parameters.
• The inventory device is a "dedicated host" offered by AWS, when the Host ID is returned in inventory for the host itself, and not for inventory from its hosted virtual machine instances.

Note:A simpler way to identify the host for most VMs is to check the Host field on the VM properties tab of its inventory device properties.

This field displays None for:

• Physical devices (computers)
• Virtual machines that are not linked to a virtual host (when reported by your cloud service provider)
• Virtual machines running operating systems that do not report this value.

Hosted in

This shows where the device is hosted. When the Inventory device type is Virtual machine, the virtual host may be on-premises in your enterprise, or located in a cloud operated by a particular cloud service provider. Other inventory devices may also be hosted in the cloud (for example, dedicated hosts and bare metal instances for AWS).

Tip:You may also set license consumption rules to restrict a license for use in matching environments (see License Consumption Rules). This inventory device may consume only from a license that permits the chosen host location.

The On-premises setting is the default. For some cloud service providers, the Hosted in value is set automatically through inventory (AWS is supported from version 13.1.0 of Inventory Agent, and Azure is supported from version 13.2.0). For other cloud service providers, you must make a selection manually for each inventory device – for example, this value is not returned for Google Cloud. (The list of permitted cloud service providers is maintained in the Cloud service providers tab the IT Asset Management Settings General page (Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > General).

Note:For cloud instances, if you switch this selection from the name of a cloud service provider back to the default On-premises setting, you must confirm your choice because it will permanently remove data collected from the cloud service provider but not relevant to devices hosted on-premises. There is no undo.

Tip:When this setting cannot be determined automatically, there are several ways to update multiple virtual machines at once:

• This setting is available for editing with a multi-selection of inventory devices that should all have the same setting.
• This setting can also be updated for multiple devices through a spreadsheet import (see Inventory Data One-Off Upload Page, or see Setting Up Scheduled Imports of Inventory from Spreadsheets in the System Reference).
• The setting can be updated using the FlexNet Business Importer (see Using FlexNet Business Adapters).

Keep in mind that manual settings may be overridden by future inventory imports, if a supported cloud service provider (such as AWS or Azure) is detected automatically in the incoming inventory.

Important:For IBM Bare Metal servers in IBM Cloud, this Hosted in value must be set to On-premises. This is because Bare Metal servers are dedicated to a specific customer and are treated similarly to physical servers managed by customers in their on-premises environment. IBM sub-capacity licensing considers the number of processor cores used instead of vCPU when calculating sub-capacity. For more information, see the Flexera Community Knowledge Base article “Flexera ITAM IBM PVU License Consumption for IBM Bare Metal Servers in the IBM Cloud”.

IMEI

Displays the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, if any.

Enter the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number of a mobile device.

Only available for Mobile Device inventory device types.

Inventory device type

Specifies the type of the inventory device, which may be any of the following values:

• Computer—A computing device like a desktop, laptop, workstation, or a non-virtualized server.
• Mobile device—A mobile device like a tablet or smart phone.
• Product—Not a device type, but a pseudo-value used only in IBM VPC licenses to identify rows showing the licensed IBM product. This value may appear only if the Bundle consumption rules (in the license properties Use Rights & Rules tab, under License consumption rules) have the option Consume for each product on a device selected.
• Remote Device—The device is a remote device (not appearing in inventory) known to have accessed virtualized applications. This value is created automatically.
• VDI Template—The VDI template used to create the virtual desktop instance that was accessed from an inventory device (see Virtual Desktop Templates). This value is created automatically.
• Virtual Machine—A virtual machine running on a physical host machine. A physical host can run multiple virtual machines using virtualization technologies from VMWare, Oracle, Microsoft, and so on.
• VM Host—A physical virtual host running one or more virtual machines using any virtualization technology, such as VMWare.

When editing an inventory device record, select any of the following option from the Inventory device type drop-down list.

• Computer 
• Mobile device 
• Virtual Machine 
• VM Host 

Tip:When you try to change the type of an existing inventory device, IT Asset Management displays the Change inventory device type message box describing some impacts of your proposed change. Remember that manual changes to inventory device properties may be overwritten by the next inventory import. You must click Save to proceed with the change, or Cancel to close the dialog and leave the device type as it is. For example, when you try to change a Virtual machine to a Computer, the message box notifies that VM properties would be deleted by your action.

IP address

The IP address of the inventory device. The value of this field may change as some computers may have dynamically assigned IP addresses. If an inventory device has multiple IP addresses, this field displays a comma-separated list, to a maximum of 256 characters (when there are more than 256 characters, the list is truncated at the last available comma separator, and all following IP addresses are lost).

Tip:Addresses in the IPv6 address family are displayed where they have been returned by the inventory source. However, FlexNet inventory sources on UNIX-like operating systems (only) do not return any IPv6 addresses. Therefore:

• For non-Windows inventory devices in exclusively IPv6 networks reported only in FlexNet inventory, the IP address remains blank. (In contrast, Windows inventory devices in the same conditions display their IPv6 address.)
• In dual-stack scenarios using FlexNet inventory, for non-Windows devices the IPv4 addresses are displayed but the IPv6 addresses are omitted. (Windows inventory devices include both address families in the list of IP addresses.)
• Where (in an IPv6 network) FlexNet inventory returns no IP address for a UNIX-like device, but the same device appears in another inventory source that does return IPv6 addresses, the secondary source data is merged with the blank field, and the IPv6 address appears in the listing.

These conditions apply regardless of the method of collecting FlexNet inventory, and include UNIX-like devices inventoried by:

• The locally installed Inventory Agent
• An inventory beacon using zero footprint inventory collection
• The UNIX equivalent of the lightweight FlexNet Inventory Scanner (ndtrack.sh).

Last inventory date

Specifies the date when the last inventory information covering the majority of hardware properties was collected for this device. It is the date of the last collection by the Last inventory source.

Click the calendar control and select the last inventory date.

Last inventory source

If you have multiple overlapping inventory sources that report on the same device, it is possible for some inventory details to come from one source and other details from another source. This column identifies the most recent source of inventory that reported the majority of the hardware properties for this device. If you have declared a primary inventory connection and this device appears in inventory from that primary connection, it is likely that your primary connection is supplying the majority of hardware properties, and so is shown here.

Tip:If your primary source reported the majority of hardware properties some time ago, and since then one or more secondary sources have updated a minority of additional properties, this value still shows the primary source (source of the majority of hardware properties). Tracking the primary source is particularly valuable if you have a variation from IBM allowing you to use Inventory Agent and IT Asset Management as replacements for IBM tools (such as ILMT) in the calculation and reporting of sub-capacity licensing for IBM PVU licenses. That agreement requires that you can demonstrate that the Last inventory source is IT Asset Management, and that this source is reporting every 30 minutes.

The values are system-provided, and cannot be modified. Most values are self- explanatory; some less obvious ones include:

• Data Platform—The inventory was imported from Flexera Normalize (previously BDNA Normalize, part of BDNA Data Platform)
• Flexera SaaS Manager—This is a dummy device created for linking with imports through your Flexera SaaS Manager connector
• ManageSoft—The inventory was collected by legacy versions of the Inventory Agent, and saved in a separate inventory database
• Manual—You created this inventory device record manually, and no matching inventory has been received yet.
• SMS—The inventory was imported from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM or SMS)
• Tivoli Endpoint Manager—Inventory was imported from IBM Big Fix, or one of its earlier renamings (IBM Endpoint Manager, Tivoli Endpoint Manager).

Tip:If you have custom inventory adapters, entries for these may also appear in this column as appropriate.

Linked asset

An asset defines the way that a company chooses to manage their records, for example, by creating an asset register that lists all applicable items (for example, the computers which are being tracked for cost-depreciation purposes). An asset record might be linked to a device, while a device may, or may not, be recorded as an asset.

Use the search fly-down to identify the inventory record to associate with this asset. For details, see To Use a Fly-Down.

MAC address

The Media Access Control (MAC) address is a unique identifier assigned to each network interface card (NIC) of the device. If a device has multiple NICs, this field displays a comma-separated list of MAC addresses.

Enter the MAC address of the computing device.

Not available for Mobile Device, Remote Device or VDI Template inventory device types. For inventory devices, the value cannot be edited once inventory has been returned.

Machine ID

The name assigned to this device.

• For Windows-based computers, this property is called Computer Name 
• For AIX devices, it is the System ID 
• For HP-UX, it is the Machine/Software ID 
• Not applicable for other platforms.

Enter the machine ID for this device.

Not available for Mobile Device, Remote Device, or VDI Template inventory device types.

Manufacturer

The manufacturer of the inventory device.

Enter the name of the manufacturer of this inventory device.

Model

The manufacturer’s model name or number for this device.

Enter the manufacturer’s model name or number for this device.

Name

The name of the inventory device. This field can have any one of the following values: the first part of the full DNS name, the NetBIOS name, or the SNMP name of a computing device. If the device is a virtual host, you can also use its IP address as name.

Tip:The name displays as Flexera SaaS Manager if this is a dummy device record created for imports from your SaaS Management connector.

Important:Do not use a business adapter (or manual edits) to change the name of the inventory device that has been returned from inventory. This may cause creation of duplicate device records, and in any case will be overwritten by future inventory imports. For example, if you initially name new hardware purchases with the serial number while preparing for deployment, update the correct device name before collecting inventory.

When you are creating this record manually, enter the name of the inventory device. To avoid the risk of duplicate records, it is best practice to enter the host name recorded in the device itself.

Phone

Displays the phone number for this mobile device.

Enter the phone number for this mobile device. You can include country and area codes, and extensions, for example, +380 572-0449-6674.

Only available for Mobile Device inventory device types.

Serial number

The serial number assigned to the device. There are typically several manufacturer-provided identification codes, and for each platform the Serial number is an attempt to select a globally-unique identifier for inventory purposes. (However, the proven inconsistency of source data across platforms and inventory tools means that Serial number is only used for matching devices across inventory sources when there is no other, more precise data available.)

Tip:On Linux and Solaris platforms, any agent querying the device serial number must be running as root, or no value is returned.

The source property used as the serial number varies across platforms, and may also be affected by the inventory tool in use:

• For Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris x86, this value is reported by BIOS, and for Windows is often the same as the Chassis number.
• For Solaris SPARC, HP-UX, and AIX, it is a globally unique identifier returned by specific calls to the operating system.
• For virtual machines, the serial number is even more heavily influenced by platform and inventory tool. For example, different combinations of platform and tool mean that the HostID, the vPAR ID, or the zone UUID may be used as the serial number, to name a few.
• For virtual machines running in a zSystem environment, the serial number is formed by constructing different values to form a unique serial for the device. The firmware serial number represents the physical hardware, this is constructed from the Manufacturer, Type, Sequence Code and Plant properties (from the Store System Information (STSI) instruction). The firmware serial number is then combined with the partition number of the LPAR and the VM Name or UUID, separated with colons.
• Some inventory sources (such as ILMT) may return a blank value for serial number on some platforms (such as AIX and Linux Red Hat). When this happens, the blank value is preserved as an accurate representation of the inventory data source. If there are multiple inventory sources, other values such as HostID, UUID, ILMTAgentID, Manufacturer, ModelNo, and FirmwareSerialNumber can be used to merge records that appear in multiple sources (and in this case, one of the alternative sources may supply a serial number that is added to the merged record).
• This displays Flexera SaaS Manager with a numerical suffix in the special case where the inventory device is a dummy record created for linking with imports through your SaaS Management connector.

Note:If you manually create a device record without a serial number, or if inventory was returned without a serial number for any reason, IT Asset Management displays an alert and lists the device in the Inventory Issues page.

Enter the serial number while manually creating an inventory device record (for example, in anticipation of putting a new computer into service).

Status

Indicates the current state of an inventory device. (The Awaiting Inventory and Archived values cannot be set manually, and are generated automatically when appropriate. Archived means that the device is in transition pending deletion, but is currently held because of its historical impacts on IBM PVU sub-capacity retrospective calculations.)

When this inventory device record is linked to an asset record, you cannot manually set this Status value. For an inventory device not yet linked to an asset, you can select from one of the following status values:

• Active—A device for which the inventory information is received from an inventory source.
• Ignored—A device that is no longer managed. It is also sometimes called an unmanaged device. The applications installed on an ignored device are not counted while calculating license compliance. Likewise, if a license entitlement is allocated to an ignored device, licensed applications installed on that device do not consume from the license (nor from any other license, since the allocation keeps the device linked to this license). You may wish to ignore a device that, although it was discovered in your environment, belongs to consultants or other third parties.

Tip:When the inventory device is an Oracle Database server, and you choose Ignored, the device is excluded from any Oracle Global Licensing and Advisory Services (GLAS) reports that you may export as part of an Oracle audit.

Note:You cannot create computers of type Remote Device manually. The remote devices access applications remotely through a XenApp server, but do not report inventory of their own. Such devices are automatically created by IT Asset Management.