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June 2021

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

Administration​

Flexera One added the following Administration enhancement in June 2021.

More descriptive Flexera One roles introduced​

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This enhancement to Flexera One Roles is available in all of Flexera One.

In order to provide users with an easier way to understand which roles need to be assigned to users of Flexera One, the labels of the roles have been updated to provide more clear, descriptive, and intuitive names. In addition, application names or role functionality is provided within the role label to further help users find the roles needed for the desired applications and functionality.

Users can now also mouseover a role in the Flexera One user interface to view a description of the role. For a look at the new roles, refer to Flexera One Roles in the Flexera One Help.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management added the following new features in June 2021.

New report for IBM licensing in Kubernetes clusters​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

IBM requires that, for either IBM VPC or IBM PVU licenses for software running in Kubernetes clusters, customers must use the IBM License Service to identify the products running, and to show the points consumed for the appropriate one of those standard license metrics. The IBM License Service Consumption report, new in this release, is a helpful way to review the results of that monitoring, including for licensing of IBM Cloud Paks.

The report applies only to Kubernetes clusters. Because it merely extracts and displays data from the IBM License Service, it is completely independent of inventory collection and license consumption calculations within IT Asset Management. This has two significant impacts:

  • The consumption shown in this report is not included in any other listings or reports within IT Asset Management. For example, consumption listed in this IBM Kubernetes-only report is not included in the existing IBM Cloud Pak License Consumption report (which is a FlexNet report that excludes Kubernetes clusters), and vice versa.
  • This separation also means that, if you have software included in this report that you have also separately licensed elsewhere (not in a Kubernetes environment), the Compliance status of those other licenses no longer reflects your total exposure. You need to combine the consumption reported by the IBM License Service (shown in this report) with the consumption recorded for your other license(s) for the same product, and compare the resulting sum to the entitlements purchased.

One helpful aspect of this report is its widespread coverage. For example:

  • The report includes both individual standalone products that are not software bundles, as well as bundles like IBM Cloud Paks.
  • For software bundles, the report shows how the IBM License Service breaks down the consumption results across the individual member (bundled) products that are within the IBM Cloud Pak. You can see the contribution that each bundled product makes to the overall consumption of the software bundle.
  • The report also covers all known Kubernetes clusters within your estate (including those you are hosting in cloud service provider networks), identifying the differing points consumption within different clusters.

So a software bundle may result in several rows in the report, covering each bundled (member) product across each Kubernetes cluster, so that you can see every contributing component. IT Asset Management tracks all those contributions, and for each product bundle shows the peak value (maximum sum) for all those bundled products across all those Kubernetes clusters, as well as the date within your chosen reporting period when that peak value first occurred. These two values, the first peak date and the peak sum, are repeated in every line for a software bundle, so you can always compare the total with any contributing element in the same row. The peak sum is your licensable consumption that the IBM License Service reports for your chosen reporting period. You may select any reporting period within the last 180 days leading up to your latest nightly compliance calculation, as older data is cleaned up after that fixed period.

To access this new report within Flexera One, navigate to the IBM License Service Consumption report (Reporting > License Reports > IBM License Service Consumption).

New Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

This release introduces a new tool for collecting device and software inventory in clusters managed by Kubernetes—the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent—initially available only on Linux x86_64 platforms. This is in addition to the existing FlexNet inventory agent, which remains available as always.

The Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent brings new functionality in three main areas:

  • Resources—The Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent uses the Kubernetes API to collect resource information assigned to each cluster to report on:
    • Nodes, sometimes called "worker nodes", which are the devices (real or virtual) within your Kubernetes cluster where containers can run. Nodes are analogous to the 'container host' data already supported in a Docker environment (and for consistency within Flexera One, the 'container host' terminology is used for both kinds of environment).
    • Pods, the minimum deployable entity in Kubernetes, most often supporting a single container each (although a pod may include more than one container if these share identical resource requirements).
    • Annotations assigned to images, as required by IBM to identify IBM products running in containers instantiated from those images.
  • IBM License Service—For license compliance for IBM products running within Kubernetes clusters, use of the IBM License Service is mandatory for tracking/reporting sub-capacity consumption of purchased entitlements for the IBM VPC or IBM PVU licenses in use. Optionally, the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent can integrate with the IBM License Service, extracting license-related data for a rolling window of the last 180 days so that you can report on your preferred period within that window. For more information on the resulting report, see New report for IBM licensing in Kubernetes clusters.
  • Inventory—The Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent can return software inventory both from the nodes and from container images running in your Kubernetes cluster(s). When this functionality is enabled (which is the default), the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent delivers container software inventory by injecting the core inventory-gathering component of the existing FlexNet inventory agent (ndtrack.sh) into the container, and removing it again once inventory has been returned. You may recognize this process as analogous to the zero footprint inventory collection that can already be managed by inventory beacons, except that in this case it is managed by the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent. For this reason, both the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent and the FlexNet inventory agent (or at least, ndtrack) are distributed together in a single container.
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Software inventory from the OCI containers is required to resolve the compliance position for software running there. Keep in mind that the IBM License Service monitors only IBM software.

Because the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent requires configuration details from your (potentially multiple) Kubernetes clusters, it must be uniquely configured for your estate either in the installation process, or in the Kubernetes Resource Model (KRM) through a file in the YAML language (a template YAML file is included in the downloadable archive for the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent). Therefore some familiarity with the Kubernetes platform is required, and it's expected that you may need to collaborate with those within your enterprise who administer your Kubernetes clusters.

To access the Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent within Flexera One, navigate to the Inventory Settings page (Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Inventory Settings) and go to the Inventory agent for download section to see the Download Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent link.

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following new feature in June 2021.

Ability to import printers and network devices from BMC Discovery into IT Visibility​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

The Flexera One IT Asset Management BMC Discovery adapter has been extended to import Printers and Network Devices into Flexera One IT Visibility. This extended Flexera BMC Discovery adapter provides more visibility into your organization's IT Assets by importing Printer and Network devices data into Flexera One IT Visibility.

This extended Flexera BMC Discovery adapter functionality to import Printers and Network devices only apply to Flexera One IT Visibility customers. If you are using both Flexera One’s IT Asset Management and IT Visibility capabilities, and are already importing inventory date from BMC Discovery, you simply need to the new BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Tools.zip and upgrade your existing Flexera BMC Discovery adapter.

For a link to the zip file and for complete installation instructions, refer to the Import Printers and Network Devices from BMC Discovery into Flexera One IT Visibility article in the Flexera Community.

Workspaces​

Flexera One added the following new Workspace feature in June 2021.

Introducing Microsoft Vendor Workspace​

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This feature is available with Workspaces.

Flexera One introduced the Microsoft Vendor Workspace. This workspace provides an overall view of the spend for Microsoft licenses (on-premise and SaaS), hardware, and Azure cloud. This workspace also displays your organization’s Microsoft contracts due for renewal and due to expire to help with contract negotiations and budget planning. For more information, see Getting Started with Microsoft Vendor Workspace in the Flexera One Help.