About Asset Management Solution and CMDB Solution licenses

Products

• Asset Management Solution

Issue/Introduction

This article provides frequently asked questions and answers about how the Asset Management Solution and CMDB Solution licenses work and how to troubleshoot them if they fail to work.

Resolution

Note: CMDB Solution 7.5 and onwards no longer uses licenses. CMDB license references in this article are therefore only referring to CMDB 7.1 and 7.0.

Question: How are Asset Management and CMDB licenses consumed and released?
Answer: As Asset Management and CMDB do not have plug-ins on clients, they consume licenses when a user is in a Symantec Management Platform Console in any area that shows Asset Management or CMDB data, which include reports. This is based on the Altiris user account being used and the IP address of the computer where the license is being consumed at. A single user on the same computer, once they have consumed an Asset Management or CMDB license, can use as many areas in the console (new browsers or new tabs in the current browser) for each product as they want, however, and are not restricted access.

License are released automatically five minutes after the user goes into a non-Asset Management or CMDB area (depending on the product license being consumed) or closes their Symantec Management Platform Console. This can become a usage issue if there are only a limited number of licenses and users leave their consoles up while not actively using them, such as during lunch or after they go home for the day, as that locks the license from being used by anyone else, as there is no automatic release for inactivity. If this is a concern, it is recommended to purchase additional licenses so that more or all users can concurrently use Asset Management or CMDB.

Licenses can be manually released by restarting the Altiris Service on the Symantec Management Platform server. However, this disrupts all Altiris activity and may result in the loss of work by Altiris users and should therefore not normally be performed.

Here is examples of how Asset Management and CMDB licenses work in a multi-Asset/CMDB user environment:

Total Asset Management licenses: 1
Total CMDB licenses: 3
 

• Joe opens a Symantec Management Platform Console and goes to Home > Service and Asset Management > Procurement > Purchase Order to enter new purchase orders. While Joe is in this Asset UI, this consumes one Asset Management license, leaving none available for use until Joe goes to a non-Asset Management area in the console or closes his browser.
• Jane opens a Symantec Management Platform Console and goes to Manage > Assets > Manage Configuration Items > Computers and Peripherals > Computer to edit computer assets. While Jane is in this CMDB UI, this consumes one CMDB license, leaving two still available for use.
• Gary opens a Symantec Management Platform Console and goes to Manage > Assets > Software Licensing > Software License to enter new software licenses. This attempts to consume one Asset Management license, however, the only available license has already been consumed by Joe. Gary gets a "License exceeded" warning and is unable to continue to work on software licenses because the UI does not display them.
• Mary opens a Symantec Management Platform Console and goes to Reports > All Reports > Service and Asset Management > Assets > General Asset Report. While Mary is in this CMDB UI, this consumes one CMDB license. As there are a total of three, leaving one still available for use.
• Joe then opens a second tab in his existing browser and goes to Home > Service and Asset Management > Manage Configuration Items > Computers and Peripherals > Monitor. Since Joe is already consuming a CMDB license, no additional licenses are consumed.

Question: Is there somewhere I can see license usage?
Answer: For Symantec Management Platform 7.5, click on Home > First Time Setup. This displays license usage in the Solution Licensing web part. For Symantec Management Platform 7.1, open Symantec Installation Manager. The installed products list their license usage. Note: If red dashes appear for a specific product's license usage, this indicates that Symantec Installation Manager is currently calculating this data. Wait a few moments and this should be correctly populated.

Question: How can Asset Management and CMDB license usage be tracked?
Answer: The Symantec Installation Manager tracks how many total and consumed licenses there are for each Altiris product. This does not, however, show which users are consuming the licenses. For Asset Management, in the Symantec Management Platform Console, click on Settings > All Settings > Service and Asset Management > Asset Management Solution > License Usage. This will show which users are consuming licenses.

Question: Can Asset Management or CMDB still be used if their licenses are expired?
Answer: When Asset Management or CMDB licenses expire, a "License exceeded" warning appears when a user tries to access any area in the console that has Asset Management or CMDB data. This prevents the normal UI from appearing, disabling the viewing, editing or creating of records for the affected out of license product. The only way to resolve this is to purchase new licenses from Symantec Sales or Licensing. Note: This does not affect other products from using Asset Management and CMDB data, which is still freely available in the database.

For perpetual licenses, even after the license expires (its AUP date has been exceeded), the licenses grant full functionality to the product. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if a license is perpetual if the customer isn't sure if it is or not; to find out, the customer can contact Broadcom Customer Care via phone, by initiating a live chat on the Support Portal, or creating a new case.

Question: I've applied a new, updated license, but it's not working. How can this be fixed?
Answer: When applying a new license in Symantec Installation Manager, it warns that the newly applied licenses may not start working for thirty minutes or longer. Therefore, if the license is not working still after about one hour, there may have been issues with it. Ensure that it superseded the original license (which it may not have) and that no other licenses were present. The RemoveLicense tool can be used to check this. (In some cases multiple licenses may be present for the same product, whereas there should only be one. The RemoveLicense tool is useful for correcting this.) Information about how to do this can be found in the following article:

How to manually remove licenses without the license removal tool
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO4263

Question: I get a "License Count for Asset Management Solution/CMDB Solution has been exceeded. Licenses owned:1, in use:1" when trying to use Asset Management or CMDB. But I am sure that I'm the only person using Asset Management or CMDB. How can this be fixed?
Answer: It's possible nevertheless that another user is using Asset Management or CMDB. For Asset Management, check the License Usage tool to ensure that this is not the case. Otherwise, ensure that the Altiris roles has no one else in Asset Manager, CMDB Manager, or Symantec Administrator of which should not be using Asset Management or CMDB. This also includes roles that have nested roles. For example, if a user is part of the Symantec Level 1 Workers role, but this in turn has been custom added as part of the Symantec Administrators role, any user then in the Symantec Level 1 Workers role has the ability to access, view, edit or create Asset Management or CMDB assets.

If, however, it has been confirmed that only one legitimate user is actually using Asset Management or CMDB, this could be a known defect. Information about this can be found in the following article: 

Error "License Count for CMDB/Asset Management Solution has been exceeded. Licenses owned:1, in use:1" occurs when trying to use CMDB or Asset Management
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH166149

Question: Does Asset Management use CMDB licenses?
Answer: Asset Management licenses are entirely separate from CMDB licenses. They each use their own and do not "share" them with each other.

Question: Do I need to buy licenses for the Asset Management Suite or IT Management Suite?
Answer: Suites don't require or consume licenses, but their products may. For example, if Asset Management Suite 7.5 is installed, CMDB does not require licenses but Asset Management does. The suite doesn't use the licenses, but Asset Management does.

Question: But doesn't the Asset Manager or Symantec Administrator role not consume licenses?
Answer: Any user in any role that has sufficient rights to access Asset Management or CMDB data will consume a license when the user is accessing those products. Roles do not grant special license privileges.

Question: Can I still buy new licenses for Asset Management or CMDB 6.x?
Answer: New licenses for Asset Management and CMDB 6.x are no longer available, as these products are discontinued and no longer supported as of March 7th, 2014.