Evaluating license and product usage trends
Beginning in version 8.7, you can track your license usage for BMC Server Automation, and also how to view trends for agent deployment. The topic includes the following sections:
Listing of license types
The following table lists the types of licenses and corresponding entitlements.
License | Applies to these job types |
|---|---|
BMC BladeLogic Server Automation Suite | All types of jobs |
BMC Server Automation - License Add-on | All types of jobs |
BMC BladeLogic Server Automation – Compliance Module | Compliance, SCAP, Audit, Snapshot |
BMC Server Automation – Compliance License Add-on | Compliance, SCAP, Audit, Snapshot |
BMC BladeLogic Server Automation – Configuration Module | NSH, Deploy |
BMC Server Automation – Configuration License Add-on | NSH, Deploy |
BMC BladeLogic Server Automation – Provisioning Module | Bare Metal , Virtual Guest Job |
BMC Server Automation – Provisioning License Add‐on | Bare Metal , Virtual Guest Job |
BMC Server Automation – Patch License Add‐on | Patch Analysis |
To evaluate product usage trends
On the Health and Value Dashboard, select the Product Usage Trends option:
When you select the Product Usage Trends option, the following report is displayed. There are two sections to the report:
- License Usage Trends–This graph provides information about the number of BMC Server Automation licenses purchased against the number of licenses actually being used each month, for a period of one year (by default). The threshold line represents the number of BMC Server Automation Suite Level licenses that you have purchased. Note that a device that has a valid BMC Server Automation agent installed or deployed is considered for license counts. A device that is enrolled but does not have an active agent installed on it, is not considered for license counts, although some jobs are run against such a device.
- Agent Deployment Trends –This graph provides information about the number of BMC Server Automation agents that have been added (commissioned) against the number of agents that have been removed (decommissioned) each month, for a period of one year (by default).
You can also perform the following tasks for the graphs:
Task | Description |
|---|---|
To populate or refresh the graphs | Do one of the following:
(blcli -v <profile name> -r BLAdmins Utility generateDashboardReport) Once the job or command completes successfully, the report will be populated. |
To change the time period for the License Usage Trends graph | Run the following command using the BMC Server Automation Application Server Administration console (the blasadmin utility): Dashboard LicenseInfoDisplayTimePeriod <months> Where <months> is the number of months for which you want the report displayed. The default is 12 months. |
To display the number of licenses trend line in the License Usage Trends graph
Run the following commands using the blasadmin utility:
Command | Used to... |
|---|---|
show licenseusage | Provide a list of types of licenses. |
set licenseusage <licenseSKUType> <no. of licenses> | Set number of licenses for a particular module type, where <licenseSKUType> is one of the following:
For example: |
To generate summary and detail reports in CSV format for license usage
You can generate reports within a relative date range that you specify, or an absolute date range.
Generating reports within a specified relative date range
To generate summary and detail reports of active agents, and the kinds of jobs performed on these agents within a specified relative date range, enter the following BLCLI Utility command:
Where:
- reportFilePath is the path to the location where you want to write the CSV report and the filename. The report names will have _summary.csv and _details.csv as suffixes. For example: using /tmp/reportName would output reports names reportName_summary.csv and reportName_details.csv in the /tmp dir.
- relativeRangeValue is the number of days, months, or years
- daysMonthsOrYears is the relative time frame to use for the reports. You can choose day(s), month(s), or year(s)
The following example shows how to use this command to obtain a report for the last month.
Generating reports within an absolute date range
To generate summary and details report of active agents and the types of jobs performed on these agents within an absolute date range, use following BLCLI Utility command:
Where:
- reportFilePath is the path to the location where you want to write the CSV report and the filename. The report names will have _summary.csv and _details.csv as suffixes. For example: using /tmp/reportName would output reports names reportName_summary.csv and reportName_details.csv in the /tmp dir.
- startDateString is the start date for the report, enclosed in double quotes. Use the format "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss"
- endDateString is the ending date for the report, enclosed in double quotes. Use the format "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss" or "" (an empty string) to indicate the current date and time.
The following example shows how to use this command to obtain a report for a specific date range:
Summary report example
The following is an example of the summary report that is generated in CSV format.
Detail report example
The following is an example of the summary report that is generated in CSV format.
