Key concepts

There are several concepts that will help you to understand how License Metric Tool works and how to use it effectively.

Dashboard
The dashboard provides you with a quick overview of the most important information about scans, computers, and software assets in your infrastructure.
To Do list
Available from 9.2.13. The To Do list provides you with information about items that might require your action such as failed imports of data, availability of a new version of License Metric Tool and other.
Import or Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
The import of data or Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) is a process in the database usage that combines three database functions that transfer data from one database to another. The first stage, Extract, involves reading and extracting data from various source systems. The second stage, Transform, converts the data from its original format into the format that meets the requirements of the target database. The last stage, Load, saves the new data into the target database, thus finishing the process of transferring the data.
Software and hardware discovery
License Metric Tool discovers hardware and software in your IT infrastructure.
Fixlets, tasks, and analyses
Fixlets and tasks are central to BigFix® platform. License Metric Tool, as a part of this platform, uses them to perform required actions on selected computers. Fixlets and tasks define these actions and specify the criteria that make them relevant. Usually, an action is deployed with a simple click.
Frequency of scans and uploads of data
When you enable software and capacity scans, their default frequency meets auditing requirements. If you want to change the default frequency, ensure that the new setup fulfills the minimal requirements and all considerations.
High-water mark
Utilization of license metrics can fluctuate depending on the location and configuration of virtual machines in the physical environment. High-water mark is the peak in the utilization of a license metric by a product during the reporting period. It represents the number of metric units that are needed to license a product during that period.
Products, components, and bundles
License Metric Tool discovers software components, and bundles them to products based on the data that is contained in the software catalog.
Licensing on public clouds
Software that is installed on computers that run on public clouds is licensed according to the BYOSL policy. To ensure that license metric utilization is properly calculated for such software, computers must be identified as running on public clouds.
Licensing of non-containerized Cloud Pak programs
Available from 9.2.19. Cloud Paks deliver IBM enterprise software and open source components in open and secure solutions that are easily consumable and can run anywhere. License Metric Tool collects information about the utilization of license metrics by non-containerized products that are installed as part of Cloud Paks.
Discovering software in containers
Docker and Podman are platforms that allow for automating the deployment of applications inside software containers. License Metric Tool discovers software that is installed inside Docker or Podman containers and measures its license metric utilization.
Support for ISO/IEC 19770-2
ISO/IEC 19770-2 is an international standard for creating software identification (SWID) tags. The tags are XML files that are used for discovering and identifying software. They are delivered with software products and contain unique product-related information such as its name, edition, version, whether it is a part of a bundle and more. SWID tags facilitate software discovery and the overall process of software asset management.
Unicode
Available from 9.2.3. Starting from V9.5, BigFix Platform has the capability to gather data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server. As a result, regardless of the system and encoding that your clients use, the data is correctly displayed both in BigFix and in License Metric Tool. This capability is useful when your environment has clients with different code pages and data that contains non-ASCII characters.
Successful setup checklist
Use this checklist to verify that your License Metric Tool environment is successfully set up and the required data is collected so that the audit snapshots are reliable.

Parent topic: Overview