In BigFix Inventory we use VM Manager to pull back VM Host hardware information from vCenters. For Bigfix agents deployed the public cloud, is there a similar way VM Managers pulls back the host hardware info?
BFI provides Task 102: Identify Computers on Public Clouds (10.0.0.0) to determine the number of PVUs per virtual core. Take action on the task and target the agents that are deployed externally.
You would choose from:
- IBM SoftLayer
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon EC2
- Google Compute Engine
- Remove existing identification
Yes, I"m using that task to identify my instances in cloud but was just under the impression the task was used to tag the cloud provider. You’re saying that BFI uses the value of that property to set PVU?
Correct. According to the documentation:
A computer that runs on a public cloud is assigned the number of PVUs that is specified in the BigFix Eligible Public Cloud BYOSL policy. Information about the assigned number of PVUs is displayed on the Computers report after the next capacity scan and import of data. PVU consumption for the software that is installed on such a computer is properly calculated.
Unfortunately, the policy link in the documentation just points to the Flexnet portal login. It seems likely that the BFI Import process has this calculation built into the code. I don’t have any cloud computers to test with, so I don’t know for certain. Do you see anything in your log file that might be related? I found an entry “INFO: ETL from VUTImport: Start”.
What does your Computers report show for PVU count for your Public Cloud computers?
It does give an OK in the status column for them in the Hardware Inventory report.
It also has populated PVU columns. Is that what you were looking for?
So the PVU is unique to IBM/HCL licensing? If so, then there is no way to get physical host core counts that would be used for non IBM/HCL products?
Cool - thanks.
Yes, PVU is an IBM designation. For non-IBM purposes, you would use the Server Cores or Partition Cores value. These values will be the same for a given cloud-based computer, since there really isn’t a “physical host”.
sure, that makes sense for normal EC2 instances but what about dedicated EC2 instances we have where we need to know the physical host cores for application licensing? I take it there is no connector for that in BFI?
Why wouldn’t Server Cores work in that instance? Does the reported value not match your expected value?
Because actual physical cores may be 32 for example but there are only 2 dedicated instances running each with 2 cores. Or sometimes it is 1:5 ratio of physical cores to VM cores. I believe Server Cores is only what VM guest sees.
So, for a given dedicated EC2 instance with 2 cores, the Server Cores and Partition Cores values are each reported as 2, while the underlying physical server has 32 cores.
Unfortunately, since VM Manager doesn’t currently support cloud providers, reporting will require manual data correlation.
Agreed. I created an enhancement request https://bigfix-ideas.hcltechsw.com/ideas/BFINV-I-123
thanks for the input.
I think this makes a great deal of sense. I voted for it.