How do we calculate licenses correctly for VMware vCenter Server 6 Standard Instance when there is 1 license per managing cluster?

Products

• CA IT Asset Manager
• CA Software Asset Manager (CA SAM)
• ASSET PORTFOLIO MGMT- SERVER
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

How do we calculate licenses correctly for VMware vCenter Server 6 Standard Instance when there is 1 license per managing cluster? 

Currently, CA Software Asset Manager miscalculates each ESXi host to have 1 instance. As per VMware's licensing rules, only 1 vCenter license is needed per managing cluster. This means 1 cluster having 18 physicals hosts would still require 1 instance license only. 

The problem is that CA Software Asset Manager  maps the hosts to a cluster, but since the cluster is not a 'device' per say, how do we enter the data to obtain a correct calculation? 

 

Environment

CA Software Asset Manager 4.x releases

Resolution

Perform the following resolution steps: 

1. In “Catalog > License metrics > Tiers” create a new tier

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2. Go to “Catalog > License metrics > Tiers > Tier ranges” and create following range

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3. Navigate to “Catalog > License metrics” and create a metric based on the new tier. Select “Topology” as scope to count each cluster only once.

 

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4. Make sure the product reported as installed on the ESX hosts has the new metric assigned

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5. Refresh effective demand (run cron job)

6. Check the result via the Topology graph.  See that the whole cluster counts as 1 demand

 

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