Identifying Reasons for Device Disparity Between IT Visibility and IT Asset Management

In IT Visibility and IT Asset Management, inventory for an organization is collected from numerous inventory data sources. However, there may be device count disparity between IT Visibility and IT Asset Management due to several reasons.

The following table lists the reasons why there is a difference in the count of devices reported between IT Visibility and IT Asset Management.

Device Count Disparity Reason

Description

Devices Counted in
IT Asset Management

Devices Counted in IT Visibility

Inventory data sources not supported by IT Visibility

Some third-party data sources are supported only by IT Asset Management and not by IT Visibility. For example, Citrix Cloud.

Note:Both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility support the following third-party data sources:

• BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ADDM)
• HCL BigFix Platform (formerly Tivoli Endpoint Manager and IBM BigFix) on Microsoft SQL Server
• HP Universal Discovery (HPUD)
• IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT)
• Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (Microsoft SCCM)
• Tanium.

Yes

No

Inventory data sources not configured to report to IT Visibility

Both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility collect information about devices from data sources that are supported in their environment. However, some data sources may not be configured to report information to IT Visibility.
The device disparity may happen if your organization has requested that a data source be disabled or not connected.

Yes

No

Inventory data sources not supported by IT Asset Management

The following data sources are supported only by IT Visibility and not by IT Asset Management:

• Custom Inventory Importer tool
• Data Platform Extractor (DPv5 Extractor)
• RISC Foundation Appliance (RN150)
• ServiceNow Discovery.

No

Yes

Inventory data sources not configured to report to IT Asset Management

Both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility collect information about devices from data sources that are supported in their environment. However, some data sources may not be configured to report information to IT Asset Management.

The disparity may happen if your organization has used the IT Visibility/Universal Data Integration (UDI) beacon but not the IT Asset Management beacon to connect to a data source.

No

Yes

Device types not supported by IT Visibility

The following types of devices are supported only by IT Asset Management and not by IT Visibility:

• Container images
• Mobile devices
• Remote devices
• VDI templates.

Yes

No

Virtual Machine (VM) hosts created in IT Asset Management

IT Asset Management creates a partition host for certain virtualized stacks, such as AIX IPAR and Solaris zones. This partition host represents a physical server hosting the partitions and is created based on the common details of the partitions. The physical server is partitioned into multiple virtual partitions, each operating independently. These multiple partitions created in IT Asset Management cause disparity in device count compared to IT Visibility.

However, IT Visibility does not create VM hosts.

Yes

No

Multiple devices created for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) instances in IT Asset Management

In IT Asset Management, a new device is created for each VDI instance from the same VDI template. Whereas, IT Visibility does not support VDI templates.

Yes

No

Multiple devices created for Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (AWS EC2) instances in IT Asset Management

IT Asset Management creates multiple devices for EC2 instances with the same name and domain. As a result, IT Asset Management treats each EC2 instance as a separate device, resulting in duplicate records.

Whereas, IT Visibility creates a unique record for each EC2 instance.

Yes

No

Tanium devices with null and invalid Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) in IT Visibility

In IT Visibility, all Tanium devices are included, even those with null and invalid UUIDs. Therefore, the inventory data in IT Visibility is complete.

In contrast, IT Asset Management applies a stricter filter to incoming data that excludes Tanium devices with null and invalid UUIDs.

No

Yes

Device status mismatch between IT Asset Management and IT Visibility

Synchronizing your IT Asset Management device status with your IT Visibility device status is not done in real time. It may take 1 to 2 days for the devices to synchronize.

This delay causes device disparity between IT Asset Management and IT Visibility. For example, Computer 1 may display an Ignored status in IT Asset Management but appear as Active in IT Visibility.

If the device disparity still exists after 2 days, contact Flexera Support. For more information, see Contacting Flexera Support.

Yes

Yes

Expired devices can be deleted in IT Asset Management

In IT Asset Management, an organization can configure an inventory source to automatically delete devices that have expired. For more information, see Inventory Data Tab and Inventory Systems Tab.

Whereas, this capability is not present in IT Visibility, where an organization cannot configure an inventory source to delete expired devices.

No

Yes

IT Asset Management devices have last inventory dates older than the inventory dates recorded by IT Visibility

Organizations were using IT Asset Management before on-boarding to IT Visibility.

Yes

No

Manually created or modified devices in IT Asset Management

When devices are manually created in the Web UI or the Business Adapter Studio, or batch modified through the Business Adapter Studio or renamed in IT Asset Management, these changes are not synchronized with IT Visibility.

In contrast, IT Visibility relies solely on inventory imports for updates.

Yes

No

Devices updated in IT Visibility after the last reconciliation of licenses in IT Asset Management

In IT Visibility, device updates are reflected periodically in the API and dashboards, but there is no scheduled normalization process. However, in IT Asset Management, the normalization process occurs on a schedule and is part of the full license reconciliation job, which typically runs no more often than daily.

When a data source reports device updates to Flexera One more frequently than the IT Asset Management reconciliation schedule, there is a delay in updating the device information in IT Asset Management. This delay can cause a disparity in the device count between IT Asset Management and IT Visibility.

Yes

Yes