RSCD agent licenses

Since version 8.2 of BMC Server Automation, you do not need to explicitly license RSCD agents. Instead, you generate reports regarding the usage of RSCD agents in your environment.

Note

If you are using very old versions of RSCD agents (version 8.1 or earlier) in your environment, you must still license them, as described in Licensing-RSCD-Agents-from-older-product-versions.

This topic contains the following sections:

Generating reports about RSCD agent usage

To generate reports regarding agent usage, use the following BLCLI commands:

Command	Example
Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByAbsoluteDateRange	blcli Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByAbsoluteDateRange /mydir/report.xml "2013/01/15 01:02:04-0500" ""
Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByRelativeDateRange	blcli Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByRelativeDateRange /mydir/report.xml 2 years

For more information on BLCLI commands, see BLCLI-reference.

The following sample report demonstrates what data such commands provide.

Configuration Manager Agent Activity License Report (example)

Date:	3/3/2010 12:49
Selected Date Range:	2/8/2001 12:51 - 2/8/2020 12:51
BladeLogic Environment (Database URL):	jdbc:sqlserver://chandra:1433;DatabaseName=cpratapa_8_1_LIC;SelectMethod=cursor
Currently Active Agent Count:	20

BladeLogic Manager Suite Type	Minimum BBSA Licenses Required to Enable Currently Used Functionality
Configuration Manager	2
Compliance Manager	3
Provisioning Manager	1
Configuration Manager + Compliance Manager or Server Automation Suite	4
Compliance Manager + Provisioning Manager or Server Automation Suite	1
Configuration Manager + Provisioning Manager or Server Automation Suite	4
Compliance Manager + Provisioning Manager + Configuration Manager or Server Automation Suite	5

BladeLogic Suite types

The following product suite types are available for licensing:

Compliance Manager—BladeLogic product used to perform compliance, snapshot, audit, and discovery jobs on the target agents
Configuration Manager—BladeLogic product used to perform Deploy operations on the target agents
Provisioning Manager—BladeLogic product used to perform provisioning activities.

How agent licenses are counted

The Minimum BBSA Licenses Required to Enable Currently Used Functionality column in the report lists the number of agents used exclusively for each suite type, that is, to perform operations of only the specific suite type. The following rules are applied to the counting of agent licenses:

No target agent is counted twice.
If a target agent participated in both a Compliance operation and a Provisioning operation, then the target agent is counted only towards the Compliance+Provisiong entry in the table.
It is not counted towards the Compliance Manager entry or the Provisioning Manager entry.
The sum of all these column values should add up to the number of active servers at that point in the date range.

Example

During a specific date range, 20 servers were active. They were used for the following suite types:

6 target agents were used for Compliance activities. Of these, 2 of the target agents were also used to perform Provisioning activities.
Hence, only 4 were used to perform Compliance activities exclusively.
8 target servers were used for Configuration activities. Of these, 6 were also used for Compliance activities.
Hence, only 2 target agents were used exclusively for Configuration activity.
6 servers were used for Provisioning. Of these, 4 were also used for Configuration.
Hence, only 2 were used exclusively for Provisioning.

The final counts are:

Configuration – 2
Compliance – 4
Provisioning – 2
Compliance+Provisioning – 2
Compliance+Configuration – 6
Configuration+Provisioning – 4

The total number of target agents adds up to 20.

Licensing considerations in server management

Any server that you add in BMC Server Automation and on which you installed an RSCD Agent is counted for licensing purposes. As you manage your servers over time, ensure that you follow the proper procedures for adding and decommissioning servers, so that the licensing status of servers is updated accurately.

The following table provides guidelines for special scenarios in server management:

Scenario	Guidelines
The server was registered with an incorrect name or IP address, and you want to correct the server name. OR You want to change the server name to a fully qualified name.	First decommission the server that you originally registered, and only then add the server with its new name. Otherwise, both the old and new server will be counted as two separate servers for licensing purposes.
A server is being deleted from the environment.	You need to delete a server from your environment. For example, you are deleting a VM from an ESX server or removing a physical server. In such a case, remember to decommission the server. Otherwise, the deleted server will continue to be counted for licensing.