Devices - Inventory Devices Tab

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

The inventory devices tab displays any physical and virtual devices linked to this application, typically because inventory has reported that the application is installed on these devices.

On this page, you can:
  • Inspect the properties of any device in the list by selecting the device and clicking Open, or simply clicking the device name.
  • Override the value of the Inventoried cloud license model for inventory devices by selecting one or more devices for which Hosted in cloud displays Yes, clicking the Assign cloud license model button to expose the drop-down list of possible values, and choosing the required one (see details in the list below). The change is immediately displayed in the Overridden cloud license model column. Remember to click Save to commit your change(s). Your overridden value is used in forthcoming license consumption calculations (in the nightly license reconciliation process).
    Restriction: These restrictions apply to the Assign cloud license model button:
    1. It is only visible to operators in a role which grants the Modify an existing application permission on the application object.
    2. It is only available on those applications which are eligible for the BYOL cloud license model.
    3. It is disabled by default, and remains disabled if any device is selected for which Hosted in cloud displays No (that is, the device is located on-premises), even in a mixed set of devices.
    4. The button is enabled only when you select one or more devices in the list, all of which display a Hosted in cloud value of Yes.

The following columns (listed alphabetically) are available in this list of inventory devices. Some are displayed by default, and others are available in the column chooser.

Column Description
Assigned user

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

Editable in the Assigned field in Ownership tab of the inventory device properties.
Calculated user
The name of the most frequent user of this inventory device, over the previous 10 inventory collections. This value is calculated as follows:
  • If there is only one primary user linked to the inventory device, this user is recorded
  • If there are multiple primary users linked to the inventory device, the most frequently logged in user is recorded
  • If there is no primary user associated with the inventory device, the last user to logon is recorded.

The value of this field is automatically generated by IT Asset Management.

Not available when any of the following is true:
  • You are manually creating a new record for an inventory device
  • The inventory device is a VDI template
  • There is no inventory source (or the inventory source is Manual) reporting this inventory device.
Category

The category of this device. IT Asset Management enables you to create customized categories to group inventory devices logically. 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.

Editable in the General tab of the inventory device properties.
Chassis number

The manufacturer's chassis number reported for the device.

Editable in the General tab of the inventory device properties (for manually-created records).

Not available for Mobile Device and Virtual Machine inventory device types.
Discovery date
Indicates the earliest date that this application is known to have been installed on the device. The application's discovery date is retrieved from:
  • An inventory source, if available.
  • If the actual installation date is unavailable, IT Asset Management displays a date each installation was first reported in the inventory (or first allocated).
Domain name
The name of the domain to which the computing device belongs.
Tip: Records fabricated for special purposes display special values:
  • A dummy device record created for imports through your connector to Flexera One SaaS Management displays flexera.com
  • A record representing an Oracle Database running in Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) shows the full DNS alias (excluding the actual machine name), such as 
    clv8xj7busyg.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com

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.
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 (like AWS and Azure), the Hosted in value is set automatically through inventory. For other cloud service providers, you must make a selection manually.
Hosted in cloud

Displays No when the Hosted in column displays On-premises, and otherwise displays Yes when the device is hosted in the cloud supported by any provider. This column makes it easier to filter the list of devices to show all your virtual devices hosted by all the cloud service providers you use. For details about filtering, see Adding a Simple Filter.
Instance

Information in this column is relevant only if the application is an Oracle® database. If so, the name of a database instance installed on the device is displayed.
Inventoried cloud license model
May show the kind of cloud licensing reported in inventory. In many cases, this value remains blank, and is only populated with a value for inventory devices that have been identified through the Azure connector, and only when you have configured the devices within Azure to take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit. Possible values are:
  • Blank — The device in this row was not inventoried through the Azure connector
  • BYOL — Bring Your Own License, meaning that you have repurposed license entitlements originally purchased to authorize on-premises installations to now cover installations hosted by the cloud service provider
    Tip: To be eligible for BYOL, your license entitlements must be covered by current Software Assurance.
  • PAYG — Pay As You Go, meaning that the cloud service provider licenses the relevant software, and includes the costs in your cloud subscription, typically billing per second so that you pay only for the time used (these instances should not be allowed to consume from your purchased license entitlements, and by default do not)
    Tip: Be careful not to allocate license entitlements to these instances, as an allocation may trigger license consumption.
  • Unknown — There is insufficient evidence in the incoming inventory to determine how the software is licensed (these instances consume from your on-premises licenses by default, to minimize exposure in a license audit).
    Tip: If you have additional information, you can override the Unknown status with either of the values described above.
Inventory device type
Specifies the type of the inventory device, which may be any of the following values:
  • Cluster — A cluster of several computers, typically managed by Kubernetes and with consumption reported by the IBM License Service (which does not allow for further breakdown, for example to individual hosts or VMs within the cluster)
  • 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. Note that this value is also used for a record fabricated to represent an Oracle Database running on Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
  • VM Host — A physical virtual host running one or more virtual machines using any virtualization technology, such as VMWare.

Editable in the Inventory device type field in the General tab of the inventory device properties. The value may be overwritten by incoming inventory.
Last used date
If reported by an inventory tool, this column contains the last date when this application was used. The column is blank when either:
  • Usage tracking is not configured for this application
  • There is no inventory record of usage in the configured tracking period (see the Usage tab).
Licensable

Displays Yes when the installation of this application on the device should consume license entitlements (the usual case). May display No for certain Oracle applications, either because they are not licensable on any computer (as with certain Oracle options), or because an installation has satisfied any of a series of Oracle requirements for non-licensable installations.

Not editable. This is a calculated field.
License name

This column shows the name of a license from which the installed application consumed an entitlement (during the most recent reconciliation). If the License name column is blank, the installation on that device is unlicensed (and requires some remedial action on your part if Yes is displayed in the Licensable column). License consumption is recalculated dynamically at each reconciliation. This means that, if the application is linked to more than one license, the license name can change for any device if there is a significant change in your computer estate from one inventory import to the next.
Name

The name of the inventory device linked to this record. Click to open the properties of the inventory device.
Overridden cloud license model
Where this shows a value, it has been set by an operator using the Assign cloud license model button to modify the Inventoried cloud license model (described above). While that button allows any of the values to be set, the practical values to choose are:
  • BYOL — Bring Your Own License, meaning that you have repurposed license entitlements originally purchased to authorize on-premises installations to now cover installations hosted by the cloud service provider
    Tip: To be eligible for BYOL, your license entitlements must be covered by current Software Assurance.
  • PAYG — Pay As You Go, meaning that the cloud service provider licenses the relevant software, and includes the costs in your cloud subscription, typically billing per second so that you pay only for the time used (these instances should not be allowed to consume from your purchased license entitlements, and by default do not)
    Tip: Be careful not to allocate license entitlements to these instances, as an allocation may trigger license consumption.
Used
Yes is displayed in this column if the most recent inventory indicated that the application was used, according to the parameters you configured on the Usage tab of the application properties. No is displayed in any of the following cases:
  • Usage tracking is not configured for this application (see the Usage tab)
  • Usage tracking relies on identifying a particular executable file, and this file evidence has not been linked to the application (see the Evidence tab)
  • The inventory tool (or connection) reporting on the particular device did not return usage information
  • Usage of the application was correctly tracked, but the application was not used in the period specified on the Usage tab.

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

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