FlexNet Manager Suite 2019 R1 (On-Premises Edition)
One or two sets of controls may occur on this tab:
- For the majority of applicable licenses, use this tab to apply legal restrictions on
where a license may be consumed
- For a small set of licenses, you may also limit the types of operating system where the
license can be applied.
Each of these is described separately below.
Note: Restrictions are not a form of
assignment or prioritization. They never cause installations to preferentially consume from
the restricted license. (Use individual allocations, group assignments, and license
priorities to control the likely licenses from which an individual installation/user may
consume.) Restrictions are simply a one-way exclusion: nothing outside the boundary may
consume from the restricted license. The following example illustrates:
| The full set of licenses for MyApp, in priority order |
- License A
- License For India (restricted to location India and its children)
- License C
|
| An installation for a computer outside India sees only this list to
choose from: |
|
| An installation for a computer inside India sees the full list to choose
from: |
- License A
- License For India (restricted to location India and its children)
- License C
|
The result is that both computers will consume from License A, while that has
remaining capacity (the restriction did not change priority). If License A does not have
remaining capacity, both installations choose their second priority licenses (License for
India for the Indian computer, and License C for the one outside India).
If, instead, you
want to enforce that computers in India should first consume from License For India, use
group assignments. These change the priority ordering, but only for the target
groups.
If you want both outcomes, that Indian computers consume from License For
India
and no one else may do so, use both group assignment and a restriction. The
group assignment changes the priority (for the target groups) so that the example now
becomes:
| The full set of licenses for MyApp, in priority order (shown for a
computer in India) |
- License For India (restricted to location India and its children, plus group
assignment)
- License A
- License C
|
| An installation for a computer outside India sees only this list to
choose from: |
|
| An installation for a computer inside India sees the full list to
choose from: |
- License For India (restricted to location India and its children, plus group
assignment)
- License A
- License C
|
Now, because the group assignment elevated the priority (for this group),
Indian computers consume from License For India until it is exhausted, and then switch to
License A. Because of the restriction, outside computers start consuming from License
A.
Restrictions by geography or groups
Use the
Restrictions tab to limit the consumption of this license
strictly to the enterprise groups (and their descendents) that you specify.
Tip: If you specify more than one enterprise group, the restricted scope is treated as a
logical-OR. For example, if you restrict a license to both your
Australia location and your
Switzerland location, then users and devices from either of
these (or from any of their descendant groups) can consume from the license. This prevents
you accidentally locking out all consumption of a license (since there would be very few
devices simultaneously in both Australia and Switzerland, as required by a
logical-AND). However, the use of a logical-OR means that you cannot specify an
'intersection' between different kinds of enterprise groups. For example, you
cannot restrict a license to "the Chicago marketing team" by specifying location of
Chicago and a cost center of
Marketing. If you made those two settings, the license is
accessible to anyone in Chicago (including the CEO and anyone else outside the
marketing team) plus anyone in Marketing, worldwide.
The Restrictions tab is rarely used, as it should only reflect the
occasional legal restrictions placed on license consumption. For example, some vendors allow
heavily discounted license prices within specified African nations, on condition that the
licensed software may not be operated outside the licensed country. You can track such
restricted consumption by having an enterprise Location representing
the correct geography, and then restricting the license to that
Location. Only computers assigned to that location (or any of its
descendents) are permitted to consume from the scoped license. (Of course, this does not
restrict or detect the physical movement of the computer on which the software is
installed, although you may be required by the terms of the license to separately track such
movement.)
Tip: Do not use the Restrictions tab to enforce corporate
accounting categories (such as the responsible cost center) on a license. Instead, use the
Ownership tab for that purpose. As well, keep these legal
restrictions separate from group assignment.
A scoping restriction takes effect only in the compliance calculation process. This means:
-
Any installations of the licensed application outside the scope defined on this tab do
not consume from this license when FlexNet Manager
Suite calculates license compliance. If there is an alternative license
for the same application, the installations may be attributed to the alternative;
otherwise look for them under .
-
Because the restriction is only applied during calculations, you are not prevented from
making either individual allocations or group assignments from this restricted license
to groups outside its restricted scope. However, any installations related to those
allocations or assignments outside the restricted scope of the license are ignored in
compliance calculations — and an allocation also prevents the allocated
computer/user consuming from any other license. You should look for any such
installations under . For a license with restrictions, then, be careful to apply allocations
or assignments only to users within the same enterprise group(s).
Applying a group or location scope to a license is particularly useful for
Enterprise, Site, and
Device licenses. The tab offers a search to identify the
enterprise group(s) to which this license should be restricted, and a list of existing
restrictions. The columns available in the list are shown below.
Special properties for IBM PVU licenses
When you are working with locations, and only when
FlexNet Manager Suite is the source
of truth for IBM PVU sub-capacity consumption calculations, the search fly-down includes an
extra column for
IBM region. This may help you select the appropriate
location(s), since IBM regions are mapped through locations and affect the calculation of
peak points consumption; and the peak points consumption over a reporting period determines
your liability on an IBM PVU license. However, since the
IBM region
value has no direct bearing on license restrictions, this column is
not displayed in
the listing of selected groups (below the search fly-down).
Remember: Do
not use restrictions on this tab to limit consumption to inventory devices within
one of the IBM regions. The principle is to have a single license for each IBM product (or
a single multi-product license for each bundle) worldwide.
FlexNet Manager Suite uses
the ownership of inventory devices by
locations to roll up points consumed into
each of the mandatory IBM regions. For more detailed information, see the topic
Configuring Regions for IBM in the
FlexNet Manager Suite 2019 R1 System Reference,
available through the title page of online help.
Limitations on restrictions
The
Restrictions tab is available for many license types, but is
not available for the following license types:
- CAL Legacy
- IBM Authorized User
- IBM Concurrent User
- IBM Floating User
- Named User
- Node Locked
- OEM
- Oracle Legacy
- Tiered Device
- User.
Restrictions by operating system
Certain license types, notably from Microsoft, can be consumed only for applications running on
certain kinds of operating system. For the following license types, an additional field
called
Restrict to OS is displayed:
- Microsoft Server Processor
- Microsoft SCCM Client Device (read only value:
Non Windows Server)
- Microsoft SCCM Client User (read only value:
Non Windows Server).
For the
Microsoft Server Processor license type, you may
select one of four options:
- All — No restriction is applied, and an application
installed on any type of operating system may consume from this license.
- Non Windows Server — This means the license may be
consumed on any kind of Microsoft operating system other than a Windows Server. This
value is typically applied only to Microsoft Client Management Licenses, either for
users or devices, which are here given the license types Microsoft SCCM
Client Device and Microsoft SCCM Client
User (and have the value fixed).
- Windows desktop — With this restriction, the
license may be consumed for any applications installed on Microsoft desktop or mobile
operating systems, but not on any Windows Server operating system.
- Windows Server — With this restriction, the license
may be consumed only by applications installed on a Microsoft Windows Server operating
system.
Any restrictions you apply with this control take effect from the next compliance
calculation.