Hi
Can someone please advise if the below mentioned columns are available in BFI software installations report?
If available, what is the column name it represents in BFI s/w installation report?
If not available please advise how this can be added in the report?
Hi, some of the properties you mention are from the computer property and scans. Can you explain more about the others? If you have them as custom property on BigFix, you can get them on BFI.
Environment - Prod, Dev, Test, QA, DR etc.
Prod-Non Prod
Region
Country
Location
@Jay is correct. Any Computer property available in BigFix can be imported into BFI after they are mapped using Management --> Computer Properties.
Also, there are a number of columns available in the Software Installations report. Use the Configure --> Configure View option to choose them. In the Hardware Inventory section of the Configure View option, you will find many Host properties, including:
If I am understanding the meaning of Item 8, it is a summation of all Logical Processor Values by Host. You would need to calculate that manually after the report is run. You might take a look at Reports --> License Metrics --> All Metrics to see if that provides the summation you are looking for.
Hi
Thanks for your reply
I have checked Hardware inventory report status column it has the following values
No Scan Data
No VM Manager Data
Outdated VM Manager Data
as per item 3 VM Manager details- enabled (Yes/No) - for this do we need to consider status column in hardware report(please correct me if i am wrong)
for item 4 ; I don’t see logical processors in configure view under hardware inventory report
for item 9 i see server item sockets in configure view
Please advise how to get the rest of the items
Also pls suggest can we create custom reports in BFI
for example : for our compliance report we need to combine some columns in Software installation report, hardware inventory report etc…
instead can we configure a report with the choice of columns in a single custom report?
If yes what is the procedure?
many thanks!!
What version of BFI are you on? If you are not at 9.2.16.0, then I suggest you update BFI to the latest release.
What does ‘enabled (yes/no)’ mean to you? VM Manager is a component that is installed on your BigFix server to allow communications with vCenter servers. It must always be running, so ‘enabled (yes/no)’ has no bearing on it. The status column provides information about whether the partition (virtual machine) is completely detected by BFI. Any status other than OK means there are issues to resolve.
The Software Installations report contains some columns from the Hardware Inventory report already, so you should be able to select and include them in your compliance report.
Note that the Software Installations report shows every software product that is installed on each computer that is participating in BFI. It is NOT a licensing report, so it will not have the final VPC count. For example, if you have MS SQL Server Standard Edition installed on 6 virtual machines in your environment, there will be 6 rows in the Software Installation report, one for each VM. Further, each VM will have its own Logical Processors count. Something like:
Computer | Product Name | Metric | Logical Processors
Comp 1 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 4
Comp 2 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 6
Comp 3 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 6
Comp 4 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 8
Comp 5 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 4
Comp 6 | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 4
To understand your license position, you have to sum up all of these machines’ Logical Processors count. This is done in the All Metrics report, where there would be one row for MS SQL Server Standard Edition and a total Metric Quantity
Publisher | Product Name | Metric | Metric Quantity
Microsoft | MS SQL Server Std Ed | MS Virtual Core with SA | 32
These two reports cannot be combined in BFI.
Hopefully, this helps.
Hi
Thank you very much for your reply!
We are using V9.2.16.0, this example is helpful for Microsoft product, can you pls advise how to calculate the VPC count for IBM PVU product.
Many thanks!
Unlike Microsoft products which count the number of virtual processor cores for licensing purposes, IBM counts the number of virtual processor cores multiplied by the appropriate PVU value of the specific CPU running on VM Host.
Consider this simplistic example: you have 2 hosts running on an older model Intel Xeon processor, so it will cost you 70 PVUs per Core. The hosts have a total of 48 cores between them. If you have an IBM product installed on 6 VMs running on these 2 hosts, using 32 cores, at 70 PVUs per Core, it would require licensing 2240 PVUs of that IBM product to be in compliance.
The complicating factor is that you actually have to track what is known as the high-water mark. If you move your VMs around from one host to another, and some hosts have greater PVU-per-Core factors, then your calculated consumption would be higher while the VMs are running on the higher performing host.
Fortunately, BFI calculates consumption of PVUs for you in the IBM PVU Subcapacity Report.
See the BFI documentation here for an example: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/inventory/Inventory/overview/c_high_water_mark.html
And here is an overview of the All Metrics report, of which the PVU Subcapacity report is a subset: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/inventory/Inventory/softinv/t_generating_audit_reports.html#t_generating_audit_reports
Thanks for your reply!
We are working on you advise on PVU consumption and will get back to you for any further inputs.
In the meantime quick question, i could not find software edition column in software installation report, does BFI captures product edition?
If yes how to how to get it as could not find in configure view too.
Can you provide an example of what you mean by “product edition”?
like standard, enterprise edition etc.
The product name column in any of the License Metrics reports will include the edition. For example, “Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition”.
Note that the Software Product (edition or otherwise) is not discovered directly. It is identified in your environment by its relationship with the components that are discovered. This relationship is established by the Software Catalog, initially, or it may require that you bundle the discovered component with its proper “parent” Software Product in the Software Classification report.
At a minimum, you will need to use the Software Classification report to confirm the assignment of the component on a given Computer to its parent product from the Software Catalog.
Many components can and do have multiple potential parents, particularly software from vendors like IBM. This is where the Software Asset Manager has to use company purchasing information and IT Operations records to properly assign the installed/discovered components to the purchased software product (editions).
Thanks! this is very useful info.
Also can you please suggest is there a way in BFI to identify on which server license manager is installed
for example : to find user data(floating users count) connecting to the server, the license manager will have the data. likewise rational products usage.
Many Thanks!
This is something that BFI does not currently do, except for certain enterprise products like Oracle Database. You will have to manage this outside of BFI.
In case of certain User based metrics, the corresponding IBM product provides slm tags. You can check this on the specific product documentation page. This data will then be shown on the Reports->Resource Utilization. For e.g Cognos provides so called slm tags, Filenet P8 too.
I have checked in Reports->resource utilization and i didn’t find any any slm tags, i even selected all columns from configure view. can you pls share a screenshot about what you are referring.
For e.g IBM Documentation. This is how slm tags are delivered by some products. Once this file is available, the scanner would pick it up during the next scan. The metric type is defined in the slmtag file. You can also have your own mechanism to create these tags if required for getting this data reported into BFI. This data is then visible on the Resource Utilization report. More information can be found here: IBM Documentation
SLM Tag file looks like this:
2.1.1
IBM Platform Conductor for Spark
cb81ea05p49235b52734u0123ru2v7t9
/opt/IBM/platform
MANAGER_SERVER
3
2015-09-30T08:30:10+06:00
2015-09-30T09:30:10+06:00
MANAGER_SERVER
3
2015-09-30T09:30:10+06:00
2015-09-30T10:30:10+06:00
The formatting is somehow gone, pls see the original xml format in the link above.
The report would look like this:
