February 2021

Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.

IT Asset Management

IT Asset Management added the following new feature and enhancements in February 2021.

Oracle renames GLAS

note

This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

Oracle has renamed its former License Management Service (LMS) as its Global Licensing and Advisory Services (GLAS). Most references in IT Asset Management and its documentation have been updated to reflect this change: for example, you now download the OracleGLASEvidence.zip archive, automatically regenerated with each overnight license compliance calculation, when you need to submit evidence for an audit.

tip

The output of the renamed archive relies on the download and import of the appropriate InventorySettings.xml updates provided through the ARL downloads (provided that you have licensed the FlexNet Manager for Datacenters product). You can check your current version of InventorySettings.xml by inspecting the first line of the file, and seeing the value of the RevisionNumber attribute. The updates to the GLAS naming convention rely on at least version 56 or later.

However, some more deeply embedded cases of “LMS” remain visible. For example, if you examine the properties of an Oracle Database instance, several attributes required for the OracleGLASEvidence.zip archive still start with “LMS_”, and there are other database objects and attributes where previous names have been maintained to avoid disruption.

First look at new inventory tasks

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

New “inventory tasks” simplify the collection of various kinds of inventory, compared with the inventory rules currently available in IT Asset Management. At this initial release, inventory tasks support only VMware inventory (for hosts and virtual machines), with more inventory types to follow. The inventory tasks are quite flexible: you can load lists of target devices from .csv files, organize them into groups of your own choosing, and assign groups to Beacons for inventory upload.

To try out the inventory tasks, you must:

• At this stage, be using both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility (the user interface for managing inventory tasks is only available within IT Visibility)
• Deploy the current version (16.1.0 or later) of the IT Asset Management Inventory Beacon (this deployment must be managed through IT Asset Management)

Ask Flexera for an updated license for IT Asset Management that turns on the new functionality embedded in the IT Asset Management Inventory Beacon (ask your Customer Success Manager or Flexera Support contact).

Once these conditions are fulfilled, you can use the Data Collection menu in Flexera One to set up your Inventory Targets, Inventory Groups and assignment to inventory beacons, and discovery and inventory rules in Task Lists. Thereafter, the next scheduled inventory collection includes the collected virtualization inventory, which is displayed in Flexera One.

After exploring inventory tasks, you may like to discuss future developments in the Flexera Community, and specifically in the Flexera Ideas page.

Improved support for Oracle licenses

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

Additional fields have been added to the property pages for Oracle Processor and Oracle Named User Plus (NUP) licenses to help manage these license types for Oracle products (including, for example, Oracle Database), particularly when running on cloud instances hosted by an authorized cloud service provider. The improvements also include correct licensing support for Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (which has superseded Oracle Database Standard Edition and Standard Edition One, and has modified licensing requirements), running either in the cloud or on-premises.

New fields include:

• Minimum users type specifies the underlying unit that may multiply the minimum number of NUP entitlements required. This field refines the use of the previously-available Minimum users field on the Identification tab of NUP license properties. The minimum may be incurred once per server, once per license, or once per processor core.

  • For on-premises database servers, the latter case may also involve the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table, which is multiplied by the core count to calculate a value of “Oracle processors”. For example, a single quad-core Intel processor has a core factor of 0.5, so that a server with that configuration running Oracle Database Enterprise Edition under an NUP license on-premises would require 4 cores x 0.5 factor x NUP minimum 25, or at least 50 NUP entitlements (or more, if there are more than 50 devices and humans accessing the database).
  • In the cloud, naturally, the processor core factors do not apply. For cloud instances, IT Asset Management correctly calculates one Oracle processor for each vCPU (or thread) when hyper-threading is disabled, or one Oracle processor for two vCPU when hyper-threading is enabled.
  • All these calculations are driven by a single Points Rule Set applied to Oracle licenses.

• Number of vCPUs per socket is in the Cloud service providers group of the License consumption rules on the Use rights & rules tab for both Oracle Processor and Oracle NUP licenses. Here, the “socket” refers to Oracle's definition of a socket as an equivalent number of vCPUs, a definition that varies by the licensed edition of the product. For example, the Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 license says that one socket (which is worth one NUP license entitlement) covers 4 vCPUs.

  tip

  This setting is relevant when the value for Metric (on the Identification tab) is Number of Sockets, such as when licensing Standard Edition products. It has no relevance for licensing Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, for which the Metric settings is Number of Cores.

• Number of vCPUs per server for NUP minimums (only available for Oracle NUP licenses) defines the coverage of vCPUs (on one server) provided by the minimum number of NUP license entitlements. For example, for Oracle Database Standard Edition 2, the minimum number of NUP entitlements required is 10, and these 10 entitlements authorize use of 8 vCPUs in an authorized cloud service provider. In this case, the Minimum users field defines the 10 minimum NUP entitlements required, and this new field defines the 8 vCPUs authorized by that minimum set of NUP entitlements.

tip

Nobody ever said that Oracle licensing was easy, so the recommended best practice is to record the Oracle SKUs in your purchase records, and create (or add to) licenses by processing those purchase records. When you do this, the SKU library and PURL, updated regularly, set the appropriate values for all these 'dark corners' of your license consumption rules.

IT Visibility

IT Visibility added the following new feature in February 2021.

Tanium added as inventory data source supported for IT Visibility

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

Tanium is now added as a supported inventory data source to IT Visibility. For complete information, refer to the Flexera one Help topic, Inventory Data Sources Supported for IT Visibility.

SaaS Management

SaaS Management added the following new feature and enhancements in February 2021.

Integrations secured with OAuth2 Client ID and Client Secret authentication

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera One has expanded the number of SaaS integrations you can authenticate using OAuth2 with Client ID and Client Secret. Many organizations are adopting security polices that require this authentication method. In addition to Office 365, Project, and Visio, Flexera One now offers OAtuh2 with Client Credentials authentication for Azure, Dynamics 365, and Power BI. The links below provide instructions on how to obtain the client credentials and tenant ID in the Microsoft Azure Portal and how to integrate each application with Flexera One.

• Azure Client Credentials
• Dynamics Client Credentials
• Power BI Client Credentials

Updated minimum permissions required for Microsoft SaaS applications

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Microsoft SaaS application integration issues have occurred due to permissions issues. In response, the Minimum Permissions Required section for the following Flexera One integration instructions were updated to clarify application permissions based on the integration task and the user role.

Applications with OAuth2 Authentication Method

• Azure
• Dynamics 365
• Office 365
• Power BI
• Project (Microsoft)
• Visio

Applications with OAuth2 Client Credentials Authentication Method

• Office 365 Client Credentials
• Project Client Credentials
• Visio Client Credentials

Slack for Enterprise Grid integration

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

Slack is a cloud-based proprietary instant messaging platform developed by Slack Technologies.

These integration instructions are for users integrating with Slack using the Enterprise Grid.

• Information Stored
• Minimum Permissions Required
• Authentication Method
• API endpoints
• Application Task Tracking

Information Stored

The following table describes the available integration tasks and stored data.

Integration Task	Information Stored
Application Roster	User ID Email First Name Last Name Active Date
Application Access	User ID Last Login Notes

note

The information stored is subject to change as enhancements are made to the product.

Minimum Permissions Required

Administrator

Authentication Method

OAuth2

API endpoints

Application Roster

https://api.slack.com/scim/v1/Users

Application Access

https://api.slack.com/audit/v1/logs

Application Task Tracking

The Application Task Tracking chart has been updated to include Slack (for Enterprise Grid).