Tuesday 12 August 2008

Need a little help managing Software License Compliance Suite

http://juice.altiris.com/question/948/need-a-little-help-managing-software-license-compliance-suite

Q:
We have the CMS Level 1 and Software License Compliance Suite. The purpose of the SLC Suite was to enter software license purchase information into the NS dbase and have that license information check against the software information collected in the Inventory Solution. How do I configure the Software License Compliance Suite to simply allow me to enter software purchase info (software name, date purchased, quantity, etc.) and view a report that shows me my total number of purchased software licenses versus my total number of installed licenses for one or more software applications?

The Asset Control and Contract Management Solution Product Guide is CRAZY! What I need is someone’s Best Practices guide that lays out procedures for initial configuration, procedures for inputing new software purchase info, and relevant reports showing compliance status.

A:
The following is the standard way in which I work with software contracts:

  1. Browse to the Resouces tab > Resources > Contact Types Software Licensing > Software Purchase and create a new software purchase. This is where you can enter the name, product description, quantity and license count.
  2. Once you have completed this, in the same tree view, browse to Software Licensing > Win32 License and create a new software (Win32) license.
    1. To add the software purchase created earlier, browse to the Software Purchases tab and add a rule to have it automatically add all software purchases created with the similar naming convention, or manually add the purchase under "Other Software Purchases."
    2. To match the discovered software (Inventory Solution) to the contract, browse to the Software Installs tab and under "Software License Search Rules" click "Add List." This wizard allows you to search and select the discovered software and attach the rule to the license.
    3. After you have applied all the changes, you can now browse back to the Summary tab (only available after you have created the license and applied changes) to view Installed vs. Purchased.

Adding Software License Types

http://juice.altiris.com/tip/4936/adding-software-license-types

If you would like to track other types of software licenses other than "Concurrent" or "Per Installed Node", you can add your own. For example "Per Processor" or "Enterprise".

After upgrading to Asset 6.5 from a previous version, the "Single" ownership style is missing

Article ID: 39506

After upgrading to Asset 6.5, the "Single" ownership style is missing from the Ownership Settings page under Configuration > Solutions Settings > CMDB Solution.


Cause

This can be caused if the Ownership Style in the previous version of Asset was set to either of the following:

  • Allow
  • Allow After Warning

Both of the above settings allow an Asset to be associated to multiple users. By default, the ownership style in Asset 6.1 and 6.2 is Allow After Warning. This setting is preserved during an upgrade and corresponds to the Multiple with Warning style in CMDB Solution 6.5, which is installed during an upgrade to Asset 6.

CMDB Solution 6.5 does not allow changing from any multiple ownership style back to single.


Resolution

This behavior is working as designed.

As a workaround before the upgrade is started, set the ownership style to Single. In Asset 6.1 or 6.2:

  1. Open the Notification Server Console.
  2. Go to Configuration > Solutions Settings > Assets and Inventory > Asset Control > Asset Global Settings.
  3. Pick Single from the drop-down next to Allow Assets to have multiple owners.
  4. Click Apply.