Using Zones to Manage License Pools | v8+
Not only do Zones control which inventory users can see in the Certero platform, but they may also be used to control software license consumption by creating license pools. Placing license's in a zone will partition them off and make them accessible only to devices in that zone. License's in the Global zone are available globally, i.e., regardless of the zone of consuming devices.
We'll demonstrate the use of zones to create license pools. In the image below we have:
Main menu search
Zone management screen
Zone context chooser
I’ve already set up two zones in the zone management screen :
The Global zone is the default and is built into the Certero Platform.
Under Administration > Logins you can control which zones a user has access to, controlling what zones they see in the zone context chooser . The Global zone contains inventory which has no specific zone assignment. Global zone access allows access to all zones plus the Global zone.
We'll now set up our licence pools.
Microsoft Volume Licence Transactions must be associated with an Agreement . You need to add transactions while in the context of the zone that you want those licences to be assigned to, which means that when you enter a transaction and try to choose an agreement for the transaction, you’ll only see agreements for the zone that is currently in context. So, we have to put agreements into the correct zones.
We’ll create an agreement in our demo Open zone by first switching to the Open zone context:
Skipping ahead, I have set up an agreement each for my Global zone and for my two non-global zones. You will only see the agreements when you are in context of the zone which they are in. Here’s a view of agreements:
Switch to Global zone context, here's my Agreement in the Global zone:
Switch to the Open zone to see the agreement in the Open zone:
Switch to the Partnership zone to see the agreement in the Partnership zone:
I’m going to use MS Office Pro 2019 in my licence pool example, and I have five computers with that installed. As per the Microsoft Licensing > Software screen (following image), as viewed from Global zone context, I have:
No licences ( Effective ).
Five computers with Office installed ( Required ).
If we drill into the Required five computers, we can see that they are currently in the Global zone.
We want to demonstrate that Global zone computers can only consume licences in the Global zone and that computers in other zones can consume licences from same zone or from the Global zone, so let's change the zone assignment for some of the computers. You can do this manually with a right-click action. You can also automate zone assignment using Administration > Object Rules which we will not describe here. Here’s what it looks like after my manual allocation of computers to zones:
Now we need to add some Office 2019 licences. Under the context of the Global zone, I will add one licence in Microsoft Licensing > Volume License Transactions :
When I choose the agreement for the transaction, I will only have access to agreements in the zone that I am currently in the context of, in this case, Global:
Skipping ahead, I have added no licences to the Open zone and three licences to the Partnership zone. The final assignment of devices and licences is:
We expect these results:
The two Partnership computers will be licensed, with one spare licence remaining.
Only one of the two Global computers will be licensed because we only have one Global licence, and the Global computers can't use the spare Partnership licence.
The single Open computer will be unlicensed because we have no licences in the Open zone, there's no spare Global licences, and licences from other non-Global zones (the spare Partnership licence) can't be consumed.
Let’s check. Switch to Global zone context and check Microsoft Licensing > Software . Drilling into the Required column, we can see the expected result, whereby Global zone computers can only consume licences in the Global zone and that computers in other zones can consume licences from same zone or the Global zone:
We can further demonstrate that computers in a non-Global zone can consume licences in the Global zone by switching the allocation of the unlicensed Open zone computer to Manual . This is performed with a right-click action and ensures that the computer is assigned a licences before Automatic allocation. The result in the following image shows that the Open zone computer has been assigned the one and only licence in Global zone, leaving the Global zone computers unlicensed:
Some notes about Zones and data visibility
If you’re in Global zone context and look at Computer Systems :
You will see computers from all zones:
I f I change to a non-Global zone, I will see only the computers in that zone and the Zone tab disappears:
If I am in the Global zone and look at a licensing screen:
I can only see license quantities for the Global zone, but I can see requirements and assignments for all zones:
Drilling into Required :
If I now change to a non-Global zone:
I can see licences only for that zone (same behaviour as Global ) and I can only see requirements and assignments for computers in that zone:
Computers can be reassigned between zones, but licences cannot. To assign licences to a zone you need to enter the transactions while being in the context of the zone you want them assigned to; and the same is true for agreements.
Also, in the agreements and transactions screens, you will only see the items that are in the currently-selected zone, and in Global context you will only see Global items and not all items. For example, in this image I have no Global agreements, but I have non-Global agreements that I can't see unless I switch to those non-Global contexts:
Thanks for reading!