IBM PVU Overrides Report

The IBM PVU Overrides report lists devices consuming an IBM PVU license where either device inventory values (such as core counts) have been manually overridden, or license consumption results for one or more devices have been overridden. To be eligible for this report, an inventory device must have been included in at least one full inventory import and license compliance calculation (normally run overnight).

Tip:This report includes devices with consumption occurring any time in the data retention period for historical PVU data (the data retention period is a rolling window of time specified, while in high-frequency mode in the IBM PVU sub-capacity calculation settings section of the Licensing tab on the IT Asset Management Settings General page). Notice that any changes to overrides are taken to be corrections that take effect for the entire historical period as well as for future calculations. Even after you 'delete' the inventory device record, it stays around with the special status of Archived so that it is still taken into account for historical consumption during the reporting period.

Inventory overrides are applied generally on the Hardware tab of the inventory device properties, although the Model of the device (which may sometimes affect the choice of PVU points table to apply) is set on the General tab. If the inventory device is already Archived (and therefore invisible in normal listings), you can open its properties from the special Archived Inventory listing to make further retroactive adjustments.

Overridden consumption is set on the Consumption tab of the license properties. An override value must be non- zero (settings of zero are ignored). If, instead, your goal is to remove consumption by a device from IBM reports, apply an exemption to that inventory device.

Important:If an inventory source does not report any value for a property (technically, the value is null), and you use the same controls to set an initial value, this setting is not regarded as an override, and your manual adjustment does not appear in this report. If you wish to force this manual setting to appear in the report, make the change in two stages: save a change from null to (say) 1 for your original setting, and then save a second change from 1 to your required value. This second change counts as an override.

Generating the Report

To generate the report, perform the following steps.

To generate an IBM PVU Overrides report:

1. Go to the IBM PVU Overrides report (Reporting > Inventory Reports > IBM PVU Overrides).
2. Click Run report.

Reading the Report

The following columns (listed alphabetically) are available. By default, some are available in the column chooser.

IBM PVU Overrides Report Properties

Property

Description

Assigned user

The user assigned to this inventory device. This assignment overrides the Calculated user.

Calculated user

The name of the most frequent user of this device, over the previous 10 inventory collections.

Change date

The date on which the property change recorded in this row was made.

Change history

The property that was changed, its new value, and sometimes its previous value. For example:

• If you added or changed the Overridden consumption value to 4000 points for the particular device on an IBM PVU license, the text displayed is:

Overridden consumption was set to 4000. 

Previous value is not shown in this case.

• If you changed the Cores value on the Hardware tab of the inventory device properties from (say) 4 to 8, the text displays as:

Number of cores was changed from 4 to 8. 

Tip:For a hardware property override, the "from" number is the most recent value that was just changed, rather than any prior or original value.

Chassis number

The manufacturer's chassis number reported for the device.

Clock speed (MHz)

The maximum clock speed (in MHz) of the processor that is installed in the inventory device.

Cores

The total number of processor cores available in a physical inventory device; or the number of cores assigned to an inventory device that is a virtual machine.

Corporate unit

The corporate unit responsible for the inventory device.

Cost center

The cost center responsible for all costs incurred for this inventory device.

Created

The date when this inventory record was created in IT Asset Management.

Tip:New inventory device records are created during a full import to the compliance database, as new inventory is identified. Therefore it's quite possible to have a creation date that is later than the inventory date, with the difference being due to scheduling, such as the scheduling of imports from third-party tools, or delays between the upload of FlexNet inventory and the full import and compliance calculations (for example, if your full imports are scheduled weekly, or the like).

Creation method

The method used to create the inventory device record. The possible values:

• Automatic—The inventory device was discovered in incoming inventory
• Manual—The inventory device was manually created
• VM Host—The inventory device is a virtual machine that was discovered while taking inventory of a host server.

Disk (GB)

The total space of all hard drives installed on the inventory device, in Gigabytes.

Display adapters

The number of the computer's display adapters (monitor connections).

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.

Hard drives

The total number of hard drives installed in the inventory device.

Host

The name of the host server where this VM is a guest.

Hosted in

Shows whether the inventory device is on-premises (the default, meaning the device is within your enterprise), or in a cloud operated by a particular service provider. 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.

Inventory chassis type

The chassis type for an inventory device, as reported by the inventory process.

Inventory device

The name of the inventory device to which the override shown in this row is applied. Click to open the General tab of its properties for further inspection or retroactive adjustment.

Because this report lists one row for each override, a device may appear multiple times in the report, once for each override than an operator has made for that device.

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.

IP address

The IP address of the inventory device. For inventory devices with multiple IP addresses (for example, those with multiple network cards), a comma-separated list (up to 256 characters) is shown. IP addresses in the IPv6 address family are not reported in FlexNet inventory for devices running UNIX-like operating systems.

Last inventory date

The date when the last inventory information was collected by the Last inventory source for this inventory device.

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 FlexNet Manager Suite, 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 SaaS Management 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 as well as 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.

Last logged on user

The name of the user that was discovered to be the last logged on user on this device.

Linked asset

The name of an asset to which the device is linked.

Location

The location within your enterprise that is responsible for the device.

MAC address

The Media Access Control (MAC) address of the inventory device. If a device has multiple network interface cards, this field displays a comma-separated list of MAC addresses.

Model

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

Network cards

The total number of network cards installed in a physical inventory device; or the number of network cards accessible by the virtual machine.

Operating system

The operating system running on this device.

This value may be blank because:

• The device is recently discovered – the operating system can only occasionally be populated during first discovery, and is often backfilled once inventory is returned for this device.
• The device is a VM host that is a hardware frame that may not be running its own operating system. In this case, the computer Name field is set to a serial number associated with the hardware (because, without an operating system, there is no host name). In fact, no inventory of any kind is possible without an operating system, so IT Asset Management synthesizes the VM host record from common data reported by its guest VMs. The virtual machines in these cases may typically be partitions like:
• LPARs running on IBM PowerPC servers
• Solaris zones on either x86 or SPARC architectures
• nPar or vPar partitions running on HP Integrity servers

Overridden property
• Where the override was applied to a hardware property of the inventory device, the property name (such as Cores) is shown here. Click on the property name to open the inventory device properties to the tab where the override can be adjusted.
• Where it is the consumption result that has been overridden, this column shows Consumption for licenseName. Clicking this entry opens the Consumption tab of the license properties for further adjustments.

Partial number of processors

The equivalent number of full-time processors set by the time-sharing controls on the hardware console. Some virtualization technologies (such as on IBM's AIX operating system) report this setting in inventory. You may override an incorrect inventory value for this field.

Pool

The name given to the pool of resources to which this virtual machine belongs.

Processor type

The type of processor installed in the inventory device.

Processors

The total number of processors installed in a physical inventory device, or logical processors assigned to a virtual machine.

RAM (GB)

The size of Random Access Memory (RAM) installed in the inventory device, in gigabytes.

Role

The role assigned to the inventory device, such as Development, Test, and Production. 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 devices used exclusively for testing. For more details, see Allocations and Exemptions.

Serial

The serial number of the device, attempting to uniquely identify either the hardware (for a stand-alone device) or the virtualization container (for a virtual machine), as reported in inventory.

Tip: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.

Service pack

The service pack number or ID reported by the operating system.

Sockets

The total number of mounting sockets for central processing units (CPUs) available in a physical inventory device. For a Virtual machine, this may be the number of virtual sockets assigned to the VM.

Status

Indicates the current state of a device. It can have any of the following values:

• Active—A device for which the inventory information is received from an inventory source.
• Archived—This device is in transition pending deletion, but is currently held because of its historical impacts on IBM PVU sub-capacity retrospective calculations.
• Awaiting Inventory—This device is a place-holder that has not yet appeared in imported inventory from any source.
• Ignored—The device that is not managed. An ignored device is not considered in license consumption calculations.

Tip:If an inventory device is linked to an asset record, and that asset is given a status of either Retired or Disposed, this Ignored value is automatically set for the linked inventory device.

Threads

The total number of threads available in a physical inventory device; or the number of logical processors (virtual processors in a virtual machine, or threads assigned to a partition) assigned to an inventory device that is a virtual machine.

Updated by

The account name of the operator who updated the vendor record (also displayed in the Operator column on the History tab of the vendor properties).

VM name

The name of the inventory device. The compliance calculation updates this field with the machine name returned in inventory (matched by several properties, including serial number).

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

VM type

The type of the virtual machine.