You will love this! #3: A full solution to manage your VMWare license keys and your vSphere Optimization.

NR SAM Consulting Optimizes your vSphere licenses and removes the burden of the license keys logistics

Flexera offers and integration to vCenter that collects Cluster to Hosts to VMs relationships and also catches from the license console data the activated editions of vSphere on ESX servers (vSphere Standard, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus are not recognized from classical evidence that the agent collects, but created from the VMWare REST API provides). Furthermore, license keys (including their capacity) are collected.

The VMWare Inventory screen provides the details on what ESX has what edition activated, the used license keys, if the key have been over or under-deployed, the vCenter, number of cores etc.

NR SAM consulting, combining strong experience on managing VMWare constraints and licensing and SQL skills, helps you make the last mile and get the full value of the powerful Flexera SAM solution.

The solution includes:

• An extension of purchase orders to add the License key attribute to the Purchase Order lines.

• A Business Adapter Studio Integration that allows to import and link license keys to their PO lines, and link the ESX servers associated to the license keys in the VMWare portal. This link is using the Purchase Order line to assets link

• A report that extends the VMWare inventory screen to add transparency (cluster column, list of hosted VMs), key management information (expected license key, possible inconsistency between expected and deployed key), and license optimization (the report will assess de "VM density" each ESX server and computes a waste (or optimization value) comparing the Processor equivalents used and licensed for each ESX server).

In more details:

A new "License Key" custom property is created.

Note that custom properties are multi lingual, are automatically available on the lists (purchase screen), in the web report builder and in the mapping objects of the Business Adapter Studio.

If you are a Cloud customer, you just need to open a ticket to have your custom proper created.

More information on customization in the very instructive Customization and creating automations in Flexera One ITAM and FlexNet Manager Cloud SAM Best Practices Webinar.

Based on an Excel input, a Business Adapter Studio updates the "License Key" custom property of the purchase order lines and creates the links between PO lines and ESX servers the license key is targeted to. Note that in presence of a VMWare portal API, the data could be read directly from the portal.

The VMWare Optimization And License Keys Analysis report provides Optimization calculation, key consistency analysis and recommendations.

Interested?

If you are on premises, you can enjoy this immediately by contacting me. If you are a Cloud customer, this is a matter of patience and the report may be productized, like the 30 reports I created that now support the 3 published SAM Operations, SAM Optimization and SAM Publisher Hubs that you can explore in the Flexera ITAM Best practice information available in Flexera Community post.

Check back the list of 18 "Dots Connected" or "You will love this!" posts published or to come in this article.