Beacons

The Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Beacons page displays all inventory beacons installed in your network.

An inventory beacon is a computer with FlexNet Beacon software installed. It gathers hardware and software inventory and other information from your network and uploads the resulting files in date/time order from oldest to most recent to IT Asset Management. After installation, the inventory beacon is registered with IT Asset Management. To do this, an administrator downloads and installs a beacon-specific configuration file, and loads it into the inventory beacon (for details, see Creating and Registering an IT Asset Management Inventory Beacon). Registering an inventory beacon starts its communications with IT Asset Management. IT Asset Management tracks the status of all registered inventory beacons.

The Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Beacons page enables you to perform the following actions:

Beacons Page Actions

Action

Description

Search for an existing inventory beacon

For more information about using lists, filters, and other UI options, see the topics under Using Lists in IT Asset Management.

Deploy an inventory beacon

See Downloading and Installing the FlexNet Beacon Software. For more information about an inventory beacon and its installation prerequisites, see About IT Asset Management Inventory Beacons.

Configure an inventory beacon

See Configuring a Beacon.

Modify properties of an inventory beacon

Click the edit icon (the pencil in the Actions column) to modify the properties of an inventory beacon. IT Asset Management opens the Beacon Properties page. For more details, see Beacon Properties.

Delete an inventory beacon record

See Deleting a Beacon.

Properties

The following inventory beacon properties are available for display. Some of these properties are displayed by default whereas others may be available through the Choose columns option:

Beacons Page Properties

Property

Description

Actions
• Click the pencil icon to open the properties for the inventory beacon for inspection or editing (see Beacon Properties).
• Click the trash icon to delete this record of the inventory beacon, but be aware that this does not prevent the actual inventory beacon attempting to connect to the central application server (for more details, see Deleting a Beacon).

Beacon/Subnet

The name of the inventory beacon. When the inventory beacon has one or more subnets assigned to it for management, there is a + icon displayed to the left of the name. Click this icon to expand additional row(s) listing the individual subnet(s) assigned to this inventory beacon.

Tip:Subnets must be assigned to an inventory beacon before it can do discovery or collect FlexNet inventory (it may, however, collect third-party inventory from other systems independent of any subnet assignments).

The inventory beacon name is editable in the General tab of the inventory beacon properties. Subnet assignments are managed from the Subnets tab in the same properties page.

Beacon name

(Listed separately for assistance when the sort order of the list is unusual.) The inventory beacon managing the associated subnet.

Beacon status

Shows the operational status of the inventory beacon. For details, see Beacon Properties / General Tab.

IT Asset Management generates the value of this field.

Connectivity status

Indicates if the inventory beacon is connected to IT Asset Management. Values may be:

• Connected—the central application server is receiving regular status messages from the inventory beacon
• Check connectivity—the central application server has never received a status message from this inventory beacon
• Failed connection—the 'heartbeat' status messages were arriving previously, but now have stopped, suggesting that the connection to the inventory beacon has been broken.

IT Asset Management generates the value of this field.

Files received (last 24 hours)

The number of inventory/usage files received by the inventory beacon in the last 24 hours.

Files uploaded (last 24 hours)

The number of inventory/usage files uploaded from the inventory beacon in the last 24 hours.

Last Status Update

The creation date of the last inventory beacon status file that was imported. The rest of the columns are accurate as of this date.

Oldest pending upload

If there is a backlog of files on the inventory beacon waiting to be uploaded to the central application server (check the Total to upload column for a non-zero size for all pending files), this column shows the longest period that any file has been waiting.

Possible values include:

• Blank when there is no backlog.
• Less than 30 mins (minutes)—A minor delay may self-correct with the catch- up upload that (by default) is scheduled overnight for each inventory beacon.
• 30-60 mins—See above. Even if you are using IT Asset Management for 30-minute inventories of servers for subcapacity IBM PVU licensing, this delay is not critical, since the inventory beacon simply queues all the incoming inventory files and uploads them when possible, such as the next overnight catch-up. (However, if the locally-installed Inventory Agent cannot upload to the inventory beacon, that is quite serious, since the local files are overwritten every 30 minutes.)
• N hours—The period is rounded up to the nearest hour.
• N day(s) or week(s) or month(s)—This scale of delay in uploading indicates a problem that you should investigate and fix. Any period that passes the overnight catch-up means that uploads are consistently failing for some reason. Open the properties of the inventory beacon (by clicking the pencil icon in the Actions column) and check the Upload status tab to identify which type(s) of files are failing to upload, and remedy the issue(s).

Policy status

The status of the discovery and inventory policy currently held by the inventory beacon:

• Awaiting update—The inventory beacon has a recent policy, but since then there has been a change in rules or other content that triggers creation of an updated policy. No
• Policy—The inventory beacon has no policy at all.
• Out of date—The inventory beacon has a policy considerably older than the latest policy available with IT Asset Management.
• Up to date—The inventory beacon has the latest policy.

IT Asset Management generates the value of this field.

Site name

Specifies a site name or subnet IP address in IPv4 CIDR notation (for example, 192.168.100.0/24). A site can have multiple subnets, each with a unique IP address.

Editable in the Inventory > Network Discovery > All Subnets page.

Subnet

(Listed separately for assistance when the sort order of the list is unusual.) The subnet managed by the associated inventory beacon.

Total to upload

Shows the total file size (in megabytes) of all files that are currently on the inventory beacon awaiting upload to the central application server. When there is no backlog, the column displays 0 MB.

Tip:Some uploads that are temporarily pending may be part of normal operations, and are not an issue. For example, some files are prepared during the day, and uploaded overnight. As well, if there was a temporary networking issue when the inventory beacon tried to upload inventory, it has a catch-up retry on the same overnight schedule. To quickly assess whether there is a problem, check the Oldest pending upload column.

To see details of what types of files are awaiting upload, open the properties of the inventory beacon (click the pencil icon in the Actions column) and check the Upload status tab.