Solutions For Managing Licenses

Data is collected either directly from individual enterprise objects, such as backup servers or storage arrays; or from a centralized system, such as Hitachi Device Manager or vCenter. There may be times when you no longer want to collect data from an object. You cannot simply delete that object, because the next time data collection retrieves data, the object will once again appear in your database. In most cases, objects must be excluded and then deleted; however, there are some exceptions. Use the guidance provided in the following sections to determine how to remove objects from license counts.

When collecting from a centralized system, such as Hitachi Device Manager or vCenter, StorageConsole relies on the system to supply the information on the devices and resources that are available. For objects collected via a centralized system, there are two methods for removing collected objects:

• Preferred Method: Go to the Data Collector policy in the Portal and use the “Exclude” field to exclude objects from collection. For example, for Hitachi Data Systems, you would exclude arrays in the Data Collector policy. Similarly, for VMware, you would exclude ESX servers in the Data Collector policy. When you exclude objects through a Data Collector policy, StorageConsole will automatically delete these objects from the reporting database.

• Alternatively, you can go to the centralized system and decommission the object. In this case, you must also delete the object from the StorageConsole database. See Remove Objects from the License Count.

Many enterprise objects are probed directly to collect metadata. For objects that are probed directly, follow these steps to remove them from license counts:

• Exclude from Collection: If the object was captured during data collection, you will need to exclude it from collection so that future collections do not recapture the object. See Exclude Objects from Future Data Collections.
For Backup Manager, you can go directly to the backup software and remove the client from the backup policy, according to the vendor’s instructions. In this case, you do not have to delete the object from the database.

• Remove from License Count: In order to remove a directly probed object from licensing consideration, you must delete the object via the Object Maintenance tool in the Portal. See Remove Objects from the License Count.

Backup Manager operates differently from other products. Refer to Criteria for Determining Licensing Limits to determine the conditions under which backup clients are counted against your license. Typically, a client must be part of a backup policy or it must have been backed up recently, usually in the last 48 hours.

Since Backup Manager involves transaction-based data rather than just object metadata, when an object is excluded from data collection, these time-sensitive transactions are retained for historical reporting.

All Other Products, such as Capacity Manager and Virtualization Manager, do not keep historical data when objects are permanently deleted from the reporting database. See Remove Objects from the License Count.