Novell ZENWORKS 10 CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SP3 - COMMAND LINE UTILITIES REFERENCE 10.3 30-03-2010, Reference Manual

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License Allocation Concepts
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License Allocation Concepts
Allocating licenses to devices, departments, sites, and cost centers lets you track and maintain
license ownership within your organization.
The following sections introduce the concepts you should understand to effectively use Asset
Management to allocate licenses:
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Section 12.1, “Allocation vs. Compliance,” on page 111
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Section 12.2, “Device Allocations and Demographic Allocations,” on page 111
12.1 Allocation vs. Compliance
License allocation is an accounting tool; it assigns licenses to devices, departments, sites, or cost
centers to track license distribution and ownership. License compliance is an evaluation tool; it
compares a product’s license quantities against its installation quantities to determine a compliance
status.
With the exception that both are based on licensed products, license allocation and license
compliance are independent of one another. Allocating licenses does not affect the number of
purchased licenses or installations for a product, and therefore does not affect the license compliance
status for the product.
For example, assume that DepartmentQ purchased 30 licenses of ProductA. However, DepartmentQ
has 35 installations of the product, which means that the license compliance status for ProductA is
undercompliant (too few licenses for the number of installations). You decide to allocate 35 licenses
to DepartmentQ, which you can do even though you only have 30 purchased licenses. The
compliance status remains undercompliant because the purchased licenses, not the allocated
licenses, are used when calculating compliance.
In some instances, license allocations might help you resolve compliance problems. For example,
you notice that Product A is undercompliant by four licenses. You check the license allocation
information for Product A and see that 14 licenses are allocated to DepartmentQ and 14 devices
associated with DepartmentQ have Product A installed. At the same time, you see that 12 licenses
are allocated to DepartmentZ but 16 devices associated with DepartmentZ have Product A installed.
You know that you need to work with DepartmentZ to resolve the compliance problem.
12.2 Device Allocations and Demographic
Allocations
You can allocate licenses to devices and to demographics (sites, departments, or cost centers).
A device allocation is the assignment of a license to a specific device. The device can have the
product installed or not installed. For example, you purchase 10 licenses of ProductA. You can
allocate the licenses to the target devices before ProductA is even installed on the devices.
A demographic allocation is the assignment of one or more licenses to a site, department, or cost
center. Any device that is assigned the demographic and has the product installed shows up as an
installation associated with the allocation. For example, you purchase 15 licenses of ProductA and