Patch Management 6.2. and Application Metering 6.1 Do Not Release Licenses When PC is Marked as Not Active
I am having the same issue again and decided to share it with you. We have Altiris CMS and Asset Management implemented on Notification Server 6. Because money is tight we only buy enough licenses to cover our active PCs, as a result we are changing PCs status to not active when PC is off the network and not used.
About 14 months ago we have discovered that Patch Management Solution 6.2.3644 and Application Metering Solution 6.1.32 both have known issue:
when PC is marked as not active, these solutions are not releasing licenses and as a result license count always grows.
Currently we have 1500 active PCs, but license count as per picture below:
This is a known issue and Symantec is aware of this.
I have raised it with Symantec/Altiris and I was told that there is no fix for it and it is a known bug.
Look at KB 28823 on Altiris Knowledge Base for example.
However, there is a work around for it: ask your reseller to generate new licenses for you to cover the difference.
It is a pain for us, especially when the issue was raised several times before; every time we renew our licenses we need to go through the process of asking the extra licenses again.
P.S. I recently spoke to one of the Symantec representatives and he could not tell me if the issue was fixed in Altiris 7 platform.
Andrey Shipov
Manchester, UK
We always deleted the retired
We always deleted the retired computers, but I can see that if your Asset Mgmt policy does not allow this, this issue is rough. It has always been weird that certain solutions don't release a license when a computer gets retired. However, from looking at the documentation for CMS 7, it seems that the solutions do release licenses correctly now.
-Geo
Don't forget to mark the solution to your forum post if it has been answered!
A little clarification
Let me provide some additional information here. First off, the fact that Patch Management 6.x continues to consume a license even when a machine is retired is by design - it is NOT a bug/known issue. However, due to overwhelming feedback, the licensing behavior was changed for Patch Management 7.x and now retired assets will release its consumed license.
As already mentioned, there are multiple ways to overcome this:
1. Upgrade to 7.x :-)
2. Request temp licenses
3. Delete the retired assets
Hope this clears things up.
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Product Manager
Symantec
Thank you for the clarification Andrew
But looks like not all Symantec employees are aware of this issue.
However, I would like to comment on your points
1. Migrating to version 7 sounds easy, but it's not an option for us yet as not all solutions we use available in version 7 and those that are available are still having some issues.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to Symantec road map 2010 should be a transition year when customers will be migrating from platform 6 to platform 7 as and when working platform 7 solutions are released (usually SP1).
2. Deleting retired assets from NS data base just to harvest licenses for Patch Management 6 is wrong and would not help if Asset Management is implemented.
As I mentioned in my post, licenses are consumed whatever the Asset status is: Active, In Stock, Missing, On Order and many more you can specify in Asset Management.
Whole point of having Asset Management Solution is to be compliant with finance policies and a lot of businesses keep their records for a long time, even after when asset is disposed physically.
Interesting, but licences are recovered correctly in Inventory Solution for example.
3. Requesting additional temp licenses is the only way for us at the moment, but when I do it it's always a surprise to Symantec. Also, temp licenses only last for 6 month and I will have to ask again in spring, somehow I have a feeling that Symantec won't remember to do it for us.
Andrey Shipov
Manchester, UK
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