[BESAdmin-Announcements] IBM License Metric Tool application update 9.2.20 is now available.

[Announcements for BES Administrators]

This update includes the following key features:
·       Audit snapshot is updated to better support counting license usage 
across hybrid environments (containerized and non-containerized product 
deployments) 
The audit snapshot is extended with a dedicated file that provides daily 
values of license metric utilization for the installed products. 
Benefits: You can use this file to consolidate data from License Metric 
Tool and License Service and obtain overall license consumption across 
containerized and non-containerized environments. Alternatively, you can 
use the License Advisor that is a part of the Cloud Pak for Multi-cloud 
Management and provides the same aggregation capability by automated 
gathering of data from License Metric Tool and License Service via REST 
APIs. 
·       Improving software classification by declaring software 
entitlements
Software entitlements are products that you own and thus are entitled to 
install and use. You can declare your software entitlements, either 
manually or by importing part numbers, to improve default classification 
of the discovered components.
Benefits: Discovered components are by default assigned to products that 
are marked as your software entitlements. As a result, less manual 
classification is required.
·       Simplified way of ensuring currency of the software catalog
A new version of the software catalog is released every quarter and 
delivered together with each application update of License Metric Tool. 
When you upgrade the License Metric Tool server, a new catalog is also 
uploaded. There is no need to update the catalog separately. Because 
manual upload of the software catalog is no longer necessary, the 
following items are removed.
o       The fixlet Software Catalog Update (<version>) is removed from the 
IBM License Reporting (ILMT) fixlet site.
o       The Catalog Upload panel is removed from License Metric Tool.
It is also not possible to upload the software catalog to older 
application updates of License Metric Tool.
Benefits: You can easily ensure currency of the software catalog and avoid 
compatibility issues by upgrading the License Metric Tool quarterly.

·       Support for new platforms and virtualization technologies
o       SLES 15 SP1 on Power
o       vSphere 7
o       Disconnected scanner on Red Had Enterprise Linux 8.1 on Power
o       Disconnected scanner on Ubuntu 20 x86
·       Security enhancements
For more information, see: Security enhancements.

Other important changes:
·       Improved navigation of the All Metrics report
Navigation of the All Metrics report is unified for all products. When you 
click a link in the Product Name column, a list of components that are 
assigned to this product is displayed. When you click a link in the Metric 
Quantity column, a report that is specific for the particular license 
metric is displayed. If License Metric Tool does not provide such a 
report, the value in the column is not a link.
·       Extension of the To Do list
The To Do list is extended and displays information about using an 
obsolete version of the database.
·       Removed content
The Inventory Exploration report that was deprecated in the previous 
application update is now entirely removed from License Metric Tool. You 
can view analogical information on the Software Summary report.
·       End of support for some operating systems 
Support is dropped for IBMi 6.1. If you are using this version of the 
operating system, upgrade to a newer version that is supported by License 
Metric Tool.

·       Deploying the VM Manager Tool in disconnected mode
If you want to deploy the VM Manager Tool on a computer on which you 
cannot install the BigFix client, use the disconnected mode. Deploying the 
VM Manager Tool in this mode requires approval from IBM Compliance. 
·       Separate scripts for running software scans and packing scan 
results generated by the disconnected scanner
In the previous versions of the disconnected scanner, running the software 
scan and packaging results of the software and capacity scans was done by 
a single script. Now, you can run the software scan and pack scan results 
independently.
·       Increased limit of custom bundling rules
The number of custom bundling rules that you can create was increased from 
10 to 50.


Action to take
To learn how to get the application update and deploy it as well as to 
view the full list of new features and APARs that were fixed in this 
application update, see: Release Notes.

Questions
If you have any product-related questions, post them on the License Metric 
Tool forum: https://ibm.biz/LMT-support-forum. 




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