Agent Third-Party Deployment: Protecting Your Customizations

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

As soon as its installation is complete, the FlexNet Inventory Agent attempts to contact the inventory beacon identified in the bootstrap configuration file, and if successful, requests its policy (including the schedule on which it should perform the specified actions).

You might desire either of two distinct outcomes here:

• Most likely, you may want this computing device to 'join the family', sharing the same schedule, policy, and controlled self-updating as all other instances of the FlexNet Inventory Agent on devices that were adopted automatically. If you take no special action, this is the default behavior.
• You may want to protect the unique settings on this instance of FlexNet Inventory Agent, such as a distinct set of failover inventory beacons. In this case, continue below.

To prevent standard policy over-writing your custom settings:

1. Prevent the distribution of policy to those devices that are outside all known targets:
   1. Go to the Inventory Settings page (Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Inventory Settings).
   2. In the Beacon settings group, select the check box Migration mode: Restrict inventory settings to targeted devices.
   3. Click Save.
   This setting must remain permanently on for as long as you want to keep some of your devices (with FlexNet Inventory Agent installed) outside the reach of standard policies and settings (including the agent inventory schedule specified a little higher on the same product page).

   Warning: Turning on migration mode is a universal control that prevents every inventory beacon from answering requests from any random FlexNet Inventory Agents that call. When this control is set, inventory beacons provide policy and accept uploads only from FlexNet Inventory Agents installed on devices identified in targets that are in subnets assigned to each individual inventory beacon. You will therefore need to manage targets and assignments more carefully, and you may also wish to modify the preference SelectorAlgorithm.
2. Ensure that the protected devices are never included in any target for discovery and inventory rules.
   These rules are specified in the Discovery and Inventory Rules page (Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Discovery and Inventory Rules). There is no programmatic way to prevent these protected devices from being accidentally included in a target; it must simply be a matter of corporate guidelines that (for example) the specified subnet or the particular machine(s) must never be included in any target.
3. Plan to arrange your own updates to the FlexNet Inventory Agent on all protected devices, probably using the same configuration and deployment methods you have used for initial installation.