August 2024
Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.
Cloud Cost Optimization
Cloud Cost Optimization released the following enhancements in August 2024.
Cloud Cost Optimization Azure Modern Commerce Agreement Bill Connect migration
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Flexera One is migrating from the Microsoft Consumption APIs to the Cost Management APIs to provide you with the latest billing details for cost analysis. Using these APIs, the Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA) cost and usage details are imported into Cloud Cost Optimization. Your account manager will work with you to migrate to the new Azure Cost Management APIs to maintain your Azure cost reporting in Cloud Cost Optimization and ensure a seamless transition.
As Flexera One is migrating from the Microsoft Consumption APIs, you must migrate to the new Azure Cost Management APIs to maintain your Azure cost reporting in Cloud Cost Optimization. For more information about Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement, see Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA).
The Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement (Modern Commerce) is now renamed to Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA) in the Flexera One Help to align with Microsoft Azure terminology.
This enhancement enables you to see costs and usage and also shows parity with the Azure Cost Management Dashboard.
You can now create an Azure Bill Connect, using one of the following options:
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Azure Cost Management APIs—Use this option, if your annual cloud spend is no more than $30 million USD.
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Exports—Use this option, if your annual cloud spending is more than $30 million USD.
Commitment dimensions in Tabular View are available for all customers
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
All Cloud Cost Optimization customers now have access to commitment dimensions in the Tabular View (Cloud > Tabular View). Previously, these dimensions were offered to customers as needed in beta release. The following table describes these commitment dimensions per cloud provider.
If your organization has previously enabled the beta version of these commitment dimensions, you need to enable the new general availability dimensions. The beta version is no longer supported.
| Tabular View Dimension | Dimension Description | Cloud Vendor Supported |
|---|---|---|
| Bill Entity | Displays the billing unit for a transaction or invoice. | Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement (Azure EA) Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (Azure MCA) |
| Commitment ID | Displays the ID for the reserved instance and/or savings plan. | AWS Azure EA Azure MCA |
| Commitment Name | Displays the name for the reserved instance and/or savings plan. | AWS Azure EA Azure MCA |
New labels for analyzing Kubernetes costs
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
The Kubecost Flexera Exporter tool has been enhanced to generate additional labels that capture cluster and namespace names. These labels are ingested alongside existing Kubernetes resource labels. With these new labels, you can define tag dimensions based on familiar Kubernetes terms like cluster and namespace, making cost analysis more intuitive. For more information, see the Flexera One Help topic Additional Tags for Kubernetes Costs.
Rule-Based Dimensions limits increased
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Rule-based dimensions are flexible, user-defined dimensions you can use to view your organization’s cost data categorized in groups that fit your business needs. There are, however, some limitations that are associated with rule-based dimensions. The following limits for rule-based dimensions created either through the API or in the user interface have been increased:
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Maximum number of dimensions —You can now create a maximum of 50 dimensions. Previously, this limit was 40.
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Maximum number of rules in a rules list —You can now add a maximum of 20,000 rules in a rules list. Previously, this limit was 15,000.
For more information about the rule-based dimensions limitations, see Limitations in the Flexera One Help.
Tag Dimensions in recommendations tables
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Tag Dimensions are custom dimensions specific to your organization, used to allocate and view the cloud spend for resource tags. In the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables (Cloud > Cloud Optimization > Optimization and Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers), you can now filter and group recommendations by Tag Dimensions.
Using Tag Dimensions, you can view your organization’s cost data and optimization recommendations categorized in groups that align with your specific business needs. This enhancement enables you to analyze your costs and optimization recommendations from new, meaningful perspectives, helping you to understand and take action on the recommendations to optimize your cloud cost and usage.
For more information about Tag Dimensions, see Tag Dimensions in the Flexera One Help.
IT Asset Management
IT Asset Management released the following features and enhancements in August 2024.
Support for automatic upgrade and the ability to download the FlexNet Inventory Agent for Debian-based Linux distributions
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
From this release, you can choose to enable or disable automatic upgrade and also download the FlexNet Inventory Agent for Debian-based Linux distributions. This is similar to upgrades and installations of the FlexNet Inventory Agent for other selected operating systems on the Inventory Settings page in IT Asset Management.
You will no longer have to reach out to Flexera Support for help or log into the beacon server to retrieve a copy of the inventory agent package for Debian-based Linux distributions.
The following changes have been made to the Inventory Settings page in IT Asset Management:
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Debian-based Linux distributions inventory agent packages are now available for download under Inventory agent for download. You can download the Debian-based Linux distributions inventory agent by choosing it in the drop-down list and clicking Download.
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Debian-based Linux distributions inventory agent packages have been added to the Platform options list under Inventory agent for automatic deployment. You can enable/disable upgrades automatically by selecting or deselecting the Upgrade enabled check box.
For FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0, the first upgrade of a Debian environment still needs to be done manually. Subsequent Debian-based automatic upgrades will ensue following the first manual upgrade.
For more information on managing self-upgrades and downloading the FlexNet Inventory Agent, see Inventory Agent for Automatic Deployment and Inventory Agent for Download in the Help.
The FlexNet Inventory Agent can be configured using flxconfig
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
From version 22.2.0 and later, the FlexNet Inventory Agent has been updated with a new component called flxconfig to handle agent configuration. flxconfig is a simplified implementation of agent configuration that allows for greater security, and replaces the existing mgspolicy and ndlaunch components.
Both the mgspolicy and ndlaunch components will continue to be included in the agent installation, however are now considered obsolete and will no longer be used from version 22.2.0 onwards (for example, by the agent schedule). These components will be removed from the FlexNet Inventory Agent at some point in the future.
If you choose to upgrade to FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0 and later, you MUST also upgrade your FlexNet Beacon to version 22.2.0 and later. FlexNet Inventory Agent versions 22.1.0 and older will continue to work with FlexNet Beacon versions 22.2.0 and later.
New Application Installation Details with Usage Sessions report
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The Application Installation Details with Usage Sessions report, lists application installations along with details of the inventory device they were discovered on, and is near identical to the Application Installation Details report, with two key differences:
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An extra column titled Usage sessions, which reports on the number of sessions in which the application was run in the selected reporting period.
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A mandatory filter from which you need to select a publisher.
User sessions can be analyzed for device-based or user-based licenses. The Usage sessions column is a good indicator of who and how often individual users access a particular application. Ultimately, you can use this report to manage who in your organization is licensed to use a particular application, and either pay for the user to continue consuming the license, or revoke it if the application is not in use.
For more details, see Application Installation Details with Usage Sessions Report in the Help.
Increased security for downloading the FlexNet Inventory Agent
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
From this release onwards, the self upgrade packages will be delivered with digital signatures to verify integrity and ownership. The purpose of this change is to provide enhanced security measures for data obtained by an agent for inventory or upgrade purposes.
The FlexNet Inventory Agent will only download and install upgrade packages from the FlexNet Beacon where the digital signature can be successfully verified.
Use of new self upgrade packages - customers must upgrade existing FlexNet Beacons along with all FlexNet Inventory Agents, as older beacons and agents will not support the new self upgrade packages. If self upgrade functionality is not used (for example, if third party deployment manages agent versions deployed in a customer's environment), this requirement does not need to be met.
If you choose to upgrade to FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0 and later, you MUST also upgrade your FlexNet Beacon to version 22.2.0 and later. This relates to the replacement of the old agent policy with the new flxconfig component to handle agent configuration. The new agent configuration allows for greater security, and replaces the existing mgspolicy and ndlaunch components.
For customers that use the self upgrade functionality for agents and beacons, self upgrade to FlexNet Inventory Agent versions 22.2.0 and later is available from version 22.2.0 of the FlexNet Beacon onwards.
Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The following operating system versions have been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet Inventory Agent:
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OpenSUSE 15.6 (x86 64-bit only)
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Ubuntu 24.04 (x86 64-bit only)
The following product version has been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:
- OpenText Universal Discovery 24.2
For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.
FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0 changes
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
See FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0 changes
Inventory Beacon 22.2.0 changes
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
See Inventory Beacon 22.2.0 changes
IT Visibility
IT Visibility added the following enhancements in August 2024.
Support for automatic upgrade and the ability to download the inventory agent for Debian-based Linux platforms
This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.
Previously, inventory agents on Debian-based Linux platforms did not include the automatic upgrade functionality. On these platforms, you would have to deploy new versions of the inventory agent manually.
From this release, you can choose to enable or disable the automatic upgrade and also download the inventory agent for Debian-based Linux platforms.
To download the inventory agent for Debian-based Linux platforms, go to the Installers page (Data Collection > IT Visibility Inventory Tasks > Installers) and select the agent installer for the intended platform. To enable or disable the automatic upgrade, go to the Agent Configurations page (Data Collection > IT Visibility Inventory Tasks > Agent Configurations), edit or create an agent configuration, go to the Manage version section on the Inventory Agent Options tab, select Automatically by platform, and select or clear the checkbox for the intended platform.
For FlexNet Inventory Agent version 22.2.0, the first upgrade of a Debian environment still needs to be done manually. Subsequent Debian-based automatic upgrades will ensue following the first manual upgrade.
Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Data Collection
This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.
From this release, you can choose to enable or disable the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) data collection in the Common Settings section when you edit the default agent configuration. For more information, see Editing Inventory Agent Common Settings in the Flexera One Help.
SaaS Management
SaaS Management released the following notification in August 2024.
BlueJeans Video Communications integration is no longer available
This notification is for SaaS Management.
The BlueJeans Video Communications integration with SaaS Management is no longer available because it is no longer supported by the publisher, Verizon. For more information, see BlueJeans by Verizon. This direct integration has been removed from the list of Managed SaaS Applications (SaaS > Managed SaaS Applications) and the Flexera One Help.