FlexNet Manager for VMware
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This document summarizes FlexNet Manager for VMware, a software license optimization product for VMware licenses. It helps organizations reduce VMware software costs by optimizing license usage, maintaining compliance, and managing contracts and usage. The product leverages the FlexNet Manager Platform to collect inventory data, match licenses to purchases, and provide reporting on license optimization opportunities. It supports various VMware license models and provides license simulations to analyze changes.
FlexNet Manager for VMware
- 1. FlexNet Manager Platform WorkflowManager Adobe IBM Microsoft Oracle SAP BusinessSuite Symantec VMware EngineeringApps Autodesk,Cadence,Mentor,etc. DATASHEET Benefits to Your Organization: • Optimize VMware license management to reduce ongoing software costs - Buy only what you truly need - Ensure you have the data necessary to help prevent over and under-deployment • Maintain continuous software license compliance to minimize VMware audit risk - Avoid unbudgeted audit true-up expenses - Significantly reduce time and resources needed to respond to audit notifications • Manage VMware contracts and track usage to reduce software maintenance costs • Automate license management to improve operational efficiency For many organizations, VMware represents one of the top vendors in terms of their software spend. In addition, VMware is on the list of the top 10 vendors that perform the most software audits. For these two reasons, organizations need to proactively manage and optimize their VMware software licenses to reduce cost and audit risk. Flexera Software can help organizations address both of these areas of concern with regard to their VMware software estate. FlexNet Manager for VMware is a scalable Software License Optimization product that is built on the FlexNet Manager Platform. It automates entitlement based license management and optimization to enable the reduction of license, maintenance and audit costs for a variety of VMware products in server and desktop environments, while maintaining license compliance. FlexNet Manager for VMware is part of the FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises used by thousands of enterprises to gain control of and optimize spend across their software estate. FlexNet Manager Platform FlexNet Manager Platform provides scalable hardware and software asset management across more than 16,000 publishers and 140,000 applications, providing insight into installed software and application usage while delivering purchased versus installed license reconciliation. Its comprehensive reporting capabilities allow users to identify and evaluate areas of compliance concern and make informed decisions that reduce license and maintenance costs. FlexNet Manager Platform integrates with many other IT systems to collect the data necessary for next generation software asset management. This includes out-of-the-box connectivity to Microsoft SCCM, Altiris, BMC ADDM, HP DDMI, IBM Tivoli End Point Manager, as well as adapters for many other third party inventory and configuration management tools. In addition, the Platform provides its own native, multi-platform discovery and inventory support (Windows, Linux, UNIX, MAC OS) for both physical and virtual environments. The Platform also provides connectivity to HR, Active Directory, procurement, ERP and other systems for user, computer, purchasing and organizational data. FlexNet Manager for VMware Software License Optimization for VMware Software Products Figure 1: FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises
- 2. As with other products in the FlexNet Manager Suite, FlexNet Manager for VMware leverages the Platform to collect data from many sources and help automate the software license reconciliation process. The Platform’s Application Recognition Library is used to scrub the raw inventory data and generate the list of installed software titles, versions and editions for each physical and virtual computer in the IT environment. The inventory and application recognition process supports a wide range of VMware titles including: vSphere, vCenter, ESX/ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and ThinApp. The Platform’s Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) Library contains more than 640,000 software product SKUs and is used to automatically match inventory and application usage data with software purchase orders and contracts. The SKU Library includes more than 7500 VMware software product SKUs. The Platform determines a license compliance position for VMware by reconciling contract and license entitlement (Purchase Order) data with installed software. (See diagram above). FlexNet Manager for VMware Enhanced Inventory and License Management Capabilities FlexNet Manager for VMware provides unique introspection capabilities on top of the extensive discovery and inventory capabilities of FlexNet Manager Platform. This includes discovery and inventory of the vSphere and vCenter datacenter server products. Each installation is introspected and licensing data such as the license key, the license metric, and assigned capacity for that server is captured. FlexNet Manager for VMware provides visibility into license key assignments across servers. It is able to detect if license keys are overused, which could cause an organization to be out of compliance. It is also able to compare actual server capacity against assigned capacity to find underused license keys that may uncover over purchasing of VMware products. VMware License Models Supported FlexNet Manager for VMware supports a number of different VMware license models, including device and processor based models. VMware vCenter uses the device model and vSphere uses the processor based license model, for example. VMware Software License Optimization FlexNet Manager for VMware provides a Product Use Rights Library which encapsulates VMware licensing rules. VMware Product Use Rights include: • Upgrade—for some products, VMware allows “functionality upgrades,” which means that the customer can upgrade from a product with “lesser” functionality to a product with more functionality. (A Support and Subscription benefit). Optimized VMware License Position VMware License Compliance Position FlexNet Manager for VMware FlexNet Manager Platform Product Use Rights Library *Note: License Key collection available with FlexNet Manager for VMware Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) Library Application Recognition Library Purchase Orders Contracts - VPP - EPP - SnS Hardware Inventory Software Inventory Application Usage - VMware License Keys* Inventory Data Entitlement Data Figure 2: FlexNet Manager for VMware Flow Diagram – Showing how it leverages the Platform
- 3. • Downgrade—the right to use an older version of the software than the version purchased. It’s important to track the application of downgrade rights so that the organization has an accurate picture of its license compliance position; the number of installs of the older version may be larger than the number of licenses owned for that version. • Non-production use—in some cases, VMware license agreements allow the installation of more than one copy of an application for non-production use. For example, 2 additional installs of vCenter Application Discovery Manager are allowed for Development use. In this case, FlexNet Manager Platform provides an Exemption feature that can be used to flag these installations so they are not counted in the VMware license consumption calculation. FlexNet Manager for VMware enables organizations to calculate an optimized license position for VMware software products—reducing license consumption and ongoing software costs. License Simulations – ‘What If’ Analysis FlexNet Manager for VMware provides a license simulation capability that allows organizations to assess the impact of IT environment changes on VMware licensing, including the financial impact. This powerful feature enables organizations to determine in advance what the impact will be if they make changes to the hardware such as adding or removing processors, or installing a new software product. By performing this ‘’What If’ analysis, organizations can proactively determine budget impact and make informed decisions on changes to the environment. FlexNet Manager for VMware Automates VMware License Management FlexNet Manager for VMware reports license compliance and over-licensed conditions for VMware software. It also helps organizations manage VMware licensing contracts by utilizing the Contract Management features in FlexNet Manager Platform. FlexNet Manager for VMware is the only Software License Optimization solution that automates VMware license and contract management to maintain continuous license compliance and reduce license, maintenance and software audit costs for VMware software products. Figure 3: FlexNet Manager for VMware Inventory
- 4. Flexera Software LLC (Global Headquarters): +1 800-809-5659 United Kingdom (Europe, Middle East Headquarters): +44 870-871-1111 +44 870-873-6300 Australia (Asia, Pacific Headquarters): +61 3-9895-2000 Beijing, China: +86 10-6510-1566 For more office locations visit: www.flexerasoftware.com Copyright © 2014 Flexera Software LLC. All other brand and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. FNM_DS__VMware_Nov14 Software License Optimization for VMware Software Products Virtualization Adds License Complexity for Many Other Applications Virtualization technologies such as VMware vSphere, vMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enable organizations to more efficiently utilize their hardware assets, reducing hardware costs, power consumption and datacenter space. At the same time, virtualization adds considerable complexity to the software license management problem for the software that runs in the virtual environment. FlexNet Manager Suite Software License Optimization solutions, such as FlexNet Manager for IBM and FlexNet Manager for Oracle enable enterprises to gain control of the software running in virtual environments, to minimize software audit risk and reduce ongoing spend. About Flexera Software Flexera Software helps application producers and enterprises increase application usage and the value they derive from their software. Our next-generation software licensing, compliance and installation solutions are essential to ensure continuous licensing compliance, optimized software investments and to future-proof businesses against the risks and costs of constantly changing technology. Over 80,000 customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and neutral source for the knowledge and expertise we have gained as the marketplace leader for over 25 years and for the automation and intelligence designed into our products. For more information, please go to: www.flexerasoftware.com Next Step: Learn more about FlexNet Manager for VMware and the other products in the FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises— visit www.flexerasoftware.com/SLO or contact a Flexera Software representative.