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May 2024

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

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization released the following enhancements in May 2024.

Additional properties available in the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Understanding your spend recommendations is paramount to optimizing your cloud spend and usage. To make rate and usage recommendations more actionable, the following additional recommendation properties are now added to the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables (Cloud > Cloud Optimization > Optimization and Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers):

  • Recommendation Id —A unique identifier for the recommendation.

  • Recommendation Details —The user-friendly description of the recommended action. For example, Terminate EC2 instance <instance ID> in AWS account <account name> (<account number>).

This enhancement enables you to understand and take action on the recommendations to optimize your cloud cost and usage.

For information on creating a recommendation, see Create a Recommendation From a Policy Template in the Flexera One Help.

Relevant properties now display by default in the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

In the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables (Cloud > Cloud Optimization > Optimization and Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers), relevant properties are now displayed by default. The following table lists some of these default properties.

Rate ReductionUsage Reduction
Lookback PeriodCPU Utilization
Payment OptionLookback Period
PlatformRecommended Resource Type
TermThreshold

This enhancement enables you to easily review the relevant properties without having to manually select additional properties using the Columns button.

Previously, you had to select or clear the check boxes next to the properties to include or exclude them in the Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction recommendations tables.

For more information on Rate and Usage Reduction recommendations, see the following Flexera One Help topics:

New columns added on the Reserved Instances page for Microsoft Azure​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Two new columns— Purchased Quantity and Remaining Quantity have been added on the Reserved Instances page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Reserved Instances) for Microsoft Azure. These columns provide information about the number of reservations purchased and the quantity remaining.

This enhancement enables the FinOps team to gain insights into the utilization of reservations and make informed decisions on optimizing the reservation usage effectively, particularly focusing on utilization of reservable services such as Virtual Machines (VMs), Linux OS, and Databricks.

For more information, see Viewing Microsoft Azure Reservations in the Flexera One Help.

Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow​

Flexera has re-certified version 5.1.3 of the Flexera Integration app in the ServiceNow Store in May 2024.

Flexera Integration app version 5.1.3 re-certified to include support for the Washington DC release of ServiceNow​

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This app is available with IT Visibility.

Flexera helps you improve the value you derive from your ServiceNow investment from aggregation, normalization, and enrichment of hardware, software, SaaS, and cloud IT asset inventory data to IT service delivery. With Technopedia®, the most trusted source of IT product information in the world, Flexera enhances IT service management (ITSM), Configuration Management Systems, and Software Asset Management with a reliable foundation and accurate data.

The current version of the Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow now supports the ServiceNow Washington DC release.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management released the following feature and enhancements in May 2024.

Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products​

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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:

  • Ubuntu 23.10 (x86 64-bit only)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.3 (x86 64-bit only)

  • Oracle Linux 8.9 and 9.3 (x86 64-bit only)

For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.

The Kubernetes Inventory Agent recognizes accurate worker node inventory for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

In this release, the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent has been further enhanced to recognize accurate worker node inventory in a Kubernetes cluster for Red Hat OpenShift. Prior to this enhancement, the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent collected inventory data pertaining to the Kubernetes container, instead of collecting inventory data for the actual worker node that the Kubernetes container was deployed to.

On collecting accurate worker node inventory data, for any installed application(s) imported into IT Asset Management that are subscribed to and paid for, you can now license these applications accordingly by creating a license for the application(s) to consume against.

This enhancement is supported by the Standard Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent (often referred to as the "full" Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent), and the Lightweight Kubernetes Inventory Agent. Installer evidence will be updated to reflect new inventory, and inventory that is no longer present will be removed each and every time the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent collects inventory from a Kubernetes cluster(s) in your environment.

Notable changes​

  • The hostname of a Kubernetes worker node is now visible in the IT Asset Management UI in all contexts where an operator is viewing details about a worker node (All Inventory, Inventory Device Properties, Custom Reports, and so on). Prior to this change, the Kuberenetes node unique identifier for the worker node was displayed in the hostname column on the All Containers page.

  • The operating system of a Kubernetes worker node is now visible on any page in the IT Asset Management UI which shows the operating system of an inventory device (All Inventory, Inventory Device Properties, Custom Reports, and so on). Prior to this change, the reported operating system was the operating system of the Kubernetes container that was used to collect inventory rather than the actual operating system installed on the worker node. To support this change, a new property called OSImage was added to the MGS_KubernetesNode class which is uploaded as part of the primary Kubernetes resource inventory. For more information on the MGS_KubernetesNode class, see Kubernetes Inventory Uploads in the Gathering FlexNet Inventory user guide.

  • Red Hat OpenShift subscription components in your Kubernetes cluster environments can now be recognized using the full and Lightweight Kubernetes Inventory Agent. After inventory has been collected, subscription component data is mapped over to IT Asset Management and can be viewed from the All Containers page (Inventory > All Containers).

How to enable software inventory to be collected​

In order to collect software inventory from a worker node (operating system and other applications that are installed on the worker node), there are two Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent attributes that need to be enabled: The mountHostFS attribute and the collectHostRpmInfo attribute. For details on how to enable these attributes, see Attributes for Agent Features in the Help.

Red Hat OpenShift worker nodes based on RHEL CoreOS are immutable, and software inventory for these nodes will be collected by allowing the Flexera krm daemonset (which runs on all nodes) to mount file paths on the node host itself as read-only mounts. The operating system data and installed RPM packages are then reported in the k8s-node NDI.

For information on how to download and install the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent, see Download Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent in the Help.

The Kubernetes Inventory Agent now supports deployment of Helm chart templates​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent now supports predefined out-of-the-box Kubernetes Helm chart templates. For Flexera customers who use Helm charts, this new functionality will help to accelerate the deployment of the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent to your Kubernetes clusters.

Two Helm charts are available and can be pulled from repositories hosted on Flexera AWS ECR - https://gallery.ecr.aws/flexera/​:

Prior to this new functionality, customers were required to write complex syntax files and create their own Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent YAML file. From this release, after pulling the Helm chart and saving it to a directory, you only need to edit the options within the values.yaml file as needed.

For each Helm chart, the majority of options within the values.yaml file are predefined and each option has a descriptive comment. Customers are required to specify the FlexNet Beacon URL and persistent storage options for the Full Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent, and the FlexNet Beacon URL for the Lightweight Kubernetes Inventory Agent.

For configuration and installation steps for the Full Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent, see Full Flexera Kubernetes Agent Helm chart configuration and installation in the Help.

For configuration and installation steps for the Lightweight Kubernetes Inventory Agent, see Lightweight Kubernetes Agent Helm chart configuration and installation in Gathering FlexNet Inventory.

FlexNet Inventory Agent version 21.5.0 changes​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

See FlexNet Inventory Agent version 21.5.0 changes

Inventory Beacon 21.5.0 changes​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

See Inventory Beacon 21.5.0 changes

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following new feature in May 2024.

Support for BMC Helix Discovery in IT Visibility​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

IT Visibility now supports the latest SaaS-based product offering from BMC—BMC Helix Discovery.

BMC Helix Discovery is a cloud-native discovery and dependency modeling system that provides instant visibility into hardware, software, and network devices in your IT estate.

The BMC Helix Discovery adapter works in complete parity with BMC Helix Discovery and older On-Prem technology offered by BMC. The BMC Helix Discovery adapter collects inventory data from BMC Helix Discovery and seamlessly imports it into IT Visibility. No additional setup or configuration is required for BMC Helix Discovery cloud integration.

For more information, see the following topics in the Flexera One Help:

Enhanced data accuracy for applications and hardware identified with recognition status as unrecognized​

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This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.

IT Visibility uses evidence information to identify software applications installed or accessed within your enterprise, and to identify hardware within your enterprise. You can see all your discovered software evidence and hardware evidence with overall match counts, aligned with normalized results where applicable, on the Software Evidence page (Applications & Evidence > IT Visibility Software > Software Evidence) and the Hardware Evidence page (Inventory > IT Visibility Devices > Hardware Evidence), respectively.

With this enhancement, when software and hardware with the Recognition Status as Unrecognized are discovered, a dash “ - ” now appears in the following Technopedia fields.

Software Evidence PageHardware Evidence Page
Technopedia Product IDTechnopedia Product ID
Technopedia Release IDTechnopedia Product Name
Technopedia NameTechnopedia Model Number
Technopedia ManufacturerTechnopedia Manufacturer ID
Technopedia ProductTechnopedia Manufacturer Name
Technopedia VersionTechnopedia Model ID

This enhancement improves the accuracy of data as the Technopedia details now accurately reflect the recognition status when the related instances of that evidence was last mapped.

Previously, Technopedia details were displayed for software and hardware with an Unrecognized recognition status.

For more information, see the following topics in the Flexera One Help:

New attribute added to the Software_Technopedia.csv file and IT Visibility API​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

The IsFamilyInFullName attribute is now available in both the Software_Technopedia.csv file and the IT Visibility API. This attribute enables you to create a market name for the product, which the manufacturer uses for marketing purposes.

Consider the following scenarios as mentioned in the table:

  • If IsFamilyInFullName is set to 0, this indicates that the product family is not included in the product name.
    For example, if the product family is Creative Cloud, then the product name will be “Adobe Illustrator”.

  • If IsFamilyInFullName is set to 1, this indicates that the product family is included in the product name.
    For example, if the product family is Visual Studio, then the product name will be “Microsoft Visual Studio Code”.

    Product NameManufacturerProduct FamilyProduct
    Adobe IllustratorAdobeCreative CloudIllustrator
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeMicrosoftVisual StudioCode

You can access IsFamilyInFullName by using any of the following methods:

  • Go to Flexera One's Data Export page (IT Visibility > Data Exports) and click Create Export. A compressed archive that contains multiple CSV files will be downloaded. The IsFamilyInFullName attribute is available in the Software_Technopedia.csv file.

    For more information about the data export capability, see Exporting Data and Export Files.

  • Use the IT Visibility API: Query endpoint to download the files in CSV format as a snapshot of the full inventory dataset and as delta inventory.

  • Use the IT Visibility API: Export endpoint to download the files in Parquet format as a snapshot of the full inventory dataset and as delta inventory.

SaaS Management​

SaaS Management added the following enhancements in May 2024.

Streamlined UI workflow for AppExchange, Azure, and Azure Client Credentials integrations​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

SaaS Management now offers a streamlined UI workflow for its AppExchange, Azure, and Azure Client Credentials integrations. For these managed SaaS applications, only the following tabs will display:

  • Discovered Applications (previously named Integrated Applications)

  • Integration

Flexera One Help References​

For more information on the Discovered Applications tab features, refer to the following Flexera One Help topics:

New API endpoints for SAP Concur integration​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

SAP has announced that the API endpoints currently available for the SaaS Management integration with SAP Concur will be decommissioned on May 31, 2024. After which, the integration will stop working. In response, the Expense (SAP) integration instructions have been updated to reflect the new API endpoints and the enhanced authentication method OAuth 2.0 With Password and Refresh Token Grant types.

Existing Expense SAP Concur integrations with SaaS Management​

If your organization currently has a SaaS Management integration for the Expense by SAP managed application, you must reauthorize the integration. Data from existing integrations will be preserved. For details, see the “Expense (SAP) Authentication Method” section of the Expense (SAP) integration instructions.