What's new in the FlexNet Manager Suite 2014-2024 R2 On-Premises Edition

Last month, Flexera released version 2024 R2 of FNMS . This release provides customers with new features and additional value as summarized below.

In this release, a new approach to software discovery on Unix-like platforms has been introduced to tackle the inefficiencies of traditional scanning methods, for example generating excessive irrelevant file evidence. This approach uses running process tracking to identify installed software on Unix-like platforms, reducing irrelevant data collection. This new feature significantly improves the accuracy and relevance of software identification.

From this release, active inventory beacon issues and relevant details will be reported in the new Issues tab (accessible from Beacon Properties), when an inventory beacon becomes non-responsive or is not operating as expected for 24 hours.

You can view active inventory beacon issues from the Inventory beacon issues grid. You can then communicate these issues to the relevant stakeholders to resolve the issue without the need to access the inventory beacon itself. Once the issue is reported as resolved by the inventory beacon, the issue is automatically removed from the Inventory beacon issues grid.

This new report gives you full visibility of Oracle Autonomous Databases running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) or Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer using the bring your own license (BYOL) licensing model. Each record in the report represents an Oracle Autonomous Database instance running on OCI or Exadata Cloud@Customer and Key data fields help to understand base configuration (size), and whether autoscaling is enabled.

The FlexNet Inventory Agent now supports inventory collection from Podman on Linux. This new feature ensures comprehensive inventory management and aligns with the industry shift towards Podman, particularly in environments like OpenShift where Podman serves as the underlying container runtime.

Podman container inventory is disabled by default. To enable Podman inventory and running Inventory Agent inside Podman containers, navigate to Discovery & Inventory > Settings and select the corresponding checkbox in the Container scanning section.

Microsoft Azure adapter supports certificate-based authentication

By way of certificate-based authentication, the Microsoft Azure adapter can use managed identities for Microsoft Azure resources as a more secure way of authentication. Managed identities for Azure resources provide Microsoft Azure services with an automatically managed identity in Azure Active Directory. This identity can be used to authenticate to any service that supports Microsoft Azure Active Directory authentication, without having credentials in the code.

Before you can configure the Microsoft Azure adapter to use certificate-based authentication, you first need to create a self-signed certificate, import the certificate, and then upload the certificate to the Microsoft Azure Portal.

From this release, you can obtain a copy of the inventory agent package for Debian-based Linux distributions from the Inventory Settings page. You can choose it in the Inventory agent for download drop-down list and clicking Download.

In addition, you can choose to enable or disable automatic upgrade by selecting (or deselecting) the Upgrade enabled check box in the Platform options list under Inventory agent for automatic deployment.

From version 22.2.0 (2024 R1.2) the FlexNet Inventory Agent has been updated with a new component called 'flxconfig' to handle agent configuration. flxconfig is a simplified implementation of agent configuration that allows for greater security, and replaces the existing mgspolicy and ndlaunch components.

Both the mgspolicy and ndlaunch components will continue to be included in the agent installation. However, they are now considered obsolete and will no longer be used from version 22.2.0 onwards (for example, by the agent schedule). These components will be removed from the FlexNet Inventory Agent at some point in the future.

This new report lists application installations along with details of the inventory device they were discovered on. It is identical to the Application Installation Details report, with two key differences:

• An extra column titled Usage sessions, which reports on the number of sessions in which the application was run in the selected reporting period.
• A mandatory filter from which you need to select a publisher.

Ultimately, you can use this report to manage who in your organization is licensed to use a particular application. you can then either pay for the user to continue consuming the license, or revoke it if the application is not in use.

The new release also includes a number of changes from previous releases which are briefly summarized below:

• View Terminated status for Microsoft Azure short-lived cloud instances
• All Kubernetes container information is now displayed in the All Containers page even if the image is not inventoried
• Increased security for downloading the FlexNet Inventory Agent

From this release onwards, the self-upgrade packages will be delivered with digital signatures to verify integrity and ownership. The purpose of this change is to provide enhanced security measures for data obtained by an agent for inventory or upgrade purposes.

The FlexNet Inventory Agent will only download and install upgrade packages from the FlexNet Beacon where the digital signature can be successfully verified. In addition, the InventorySettings.xml file will also be delivered with digital signatures to verify integrity and ownership, with the purpose of providing enhanced security measures for data obtained by an agent for inventory purposes.

The FlexNet Inventory Agent will only download the InventorySettings.xml file from the FlexNet Beacon where the digital signature can be successfully verified. InventorySettings.xml files with invalid signatures will be rejected and an existing InventorySettings.xml file will continue to be used if a previous copy is available. InventorySettings.xml will also be verified at each run of inventory collection.

Communication libraries updated on the FlexNet Inventory Agent
The FlexNet Inventory Agent has been upgraded to use the libcurl library for the UNIX platforms and WinHTTP for Windows. This enhancement ensures that the FlexNet Inventory Agent remains up to date with modern network standards and protocols. As a result, the SSLOCSPCacheLifetime and SSLOCSPPath settings are no longer needed and have been removed. Additionally, the PrioritizeRevocationChecks setting has been updated.

In this release, both the FlexNet Inventory Agent and the FlexNet Beacon have been enhanced to provide full support for TLS 1.3. The FlexNet Inventory Agent can seamlessly integrate with FlexNet Beacon configured for either TLS 1.3 or TLS 1.2.

The following operating system versions have been added to the list of supported operating systems for the FlexNet Inventory Agent:

• Debian 12.7
• macOS 15
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.6
• CentOS Stream 10
• Oracle Linux 9.4
• Oracle Linux 8.10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.10 and 9.4 (x86 64-bit only)
• OpenSUSE 15.6 (x86 64-bit only)
• Ubuntu 24.04 (x86 64-bit only)
• Fedora Linux 40 (x86 64-bit only).

The following product version has been added to the compatibility list FNMS with other products (adapters and connectors):

• BMC Discovery (previously ADDM) 24.2
• IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) / HCL BigFix Inventory on IBM DB2 9.2.36.1
• IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) / HCL BigFix Inventory on Microsoft SQL Server 9.2.36.1
• OpenText Universal Discovery 24.2
• Citrix Virtual Apps server (previously XenApp server) 7.2402
• Citrix Virtual Desktops (previously Citrix XenDesktop) 7.2402
• EdgeSight for Citrix Virtual Apps (previously XenApp EdgeSight) 7.2402
• Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM or SMS) 2403.

For the new features as well as for the changes, your Noventiq services team will be able to provide the relevant details and take care of the necessary steps to ensure that you are able to make use of these features. Feel free to contact your service manager to discuss and plan the update.