IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT)

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

Hello Oktawian,

Thank you for your quick response. I am a little bit confused as it states in the documentation (from my earlier post)

If I have understood your reply correctly, it doesn't seem to do this. In which case I don't see what the purpose of UUID filtering provides?

I will open an enhancement request as I believe this will be a useful configuration option.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

Hello Pete,

As it states: based on universally unique identifier (UUID)...

Potentially there can be x duplicates of some UUID, thus, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from all those duplicated UUIDs the one which is stated in vmmfilterconf.properties file.
What is needed is some additional parameter to mark a particular UUID entry (parameter determining a particular Cluster/Host).

Hello Oktawian,

Thank you for your quick response. I am a little bit confused as it states in the documentation (from my earlier post)

If I have understood your reply correctly, it doesn't seem to do this. In which case I don't see what the purpose of UUID filtering provides?

I will open an enhancement request as I believe this will be a useful configuration option.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

Hello Oktawian,

I can understand that if there are duplicate UUIDs the VM Manager cannot determine which of the duplicates is the correct one.

Maybe I wasn't very clear in my original post - the 2 VM instances for which VM Manager should collect capacity data are not any of the duplicate UUIDs listed in the VM Manager logs - they have been validated as the correct and unique UUIDs for the VMs we need to process. This is why we configured the UUID filtering as it states in the documentation (https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/license-metric-tool?topic=filtering-selecting-virtual-machines-uuid-based ) 

We have specified in the vmmfilterconf.properties file the unique UUIDs of the 2 VM instances that ILMT should collect capacity data from. I expected that this would result in the VM Manager only processing the capacity data from those 2 unique UUIDs but this does not appear to be happening of the messages in the VM Manager logs are to be believed. 

The confusion here is that the VMs in question do have unique UUIDs and should, I think, in that case be filtered as stated in the documentation.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the above in case I am still misunderstanding something.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

As it states: based on universally unique identifier (UUID)...

Potentially there can be x duplicates of some UUID, thus, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from all those duplicated UUIDs the one which is stated in vmmfilterconf.properties file.
What is needed is some additional parameter to mark a particular UUID entry (parameter determining a particular Cluster/Host).

Hello Oktawian,

Thank you for your quick response. I am a little bit confused as it states in the documentation (from my earlier post)

If I have understood your reply correctly, it doesn't seem to do this. In which case I don't see what the purpose of UUID filtering provides?

I will open an enhancement request as I believe this will be a useful configuration option.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

OK...now I got it.

Indeed, VM Manager will only process the capacity data from those 2 unique UUIDs.
In such case, this duplicated warning can be ignored.
Actually, that is why the status message start with 'OK ...' to emphasize that the rest o the scan data is intact.

Hello Oktawian,

I can understand that if there are duplicate UUIDs the VM Manager cannot determine which of the duplicates is the correct one.

Maybe I wasn't very clear in my original post - the 2 VM instances for which VM Manager should collect capacity data are not any of the duplicate UUIDs listed in the VM Manager logs - they have been validated as the correct and unique UUIDs for the VMs we need to process. This is why we configured the UUID filtering as it states in the documentation (https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/license-metric-tool?topic=filtering-selecting-virtual-machines-uuid-based ) 

We have specified in the vmmfilterconf.properties file the unique UUIDs of the 2 VM instances that ILMT should collect capacity data from. I expected that this would result in the VM Manager only processing the capacity data from those 2 unique UUIDs but this does not appear to be happening of the messages in the VM Manager logs are to be believed. 

The confusion here is that the VMs in question do have unique UUIDs and should, I think, in that case be filtered as stated in the documentation.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the above in case I am still misunderstanding something.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

As it states: based on universally unique identifier (UUID)...

Potentially there can be x duplicates of some UUID, thus, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from all those duplicated UUIDs the one which is stated in vmmfilterconf.properties file.
What is needed is some additional parameter to mark a particular UUID entry (parameter determining a particular Cluster/Host).

Hello Oktawian,

Thank you for your quick response. I am a little bit confused as it states in the documentation (from my earlier post)

If I have understood your reply correctly, it doesn't seem to do this. In which case I don't see what the purpose of UUID filtering provides?

I will open an enhancement request as I believe this will be a useful configuration option.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help

Thanks Oktawian - that was what I was hoping you would confirm :-)

regards, Pete

OK...now I got it.

Indeed, VM Manager will only process the capacity data from those 2 unique UUIDs.
In such case, this duplicated warning can be ignored.
Actually, that is why the status message start with 'OK ...' to emphasize that the rest o the scan data is intact.

Hello Oktawian,

I can understand that if there are duplicate UUIDs the VM Manager cannot determine which of the duplicates is the correct one.

Maybe I wasn't very clear in my original post - the 2 VM instances for which VM Manager should collect capacity data are not any of the duplicate UUIDs listed in the VM Manager logs - they have been validated as the correct and unique UUIDs for the VMs we need to process. This is why we configured the UUID filtering as it states in the documentation (https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/license-metric-tool?topic=filtering-selecting-virtual-machines-uuid-based ) 

We have specified in the vmmfilterconf.properties file the unique UUIDs of the 2 VM instances that ILMT should collect capacity data from. I expected that this would result in the VM Manager only processing the capacity data from those 2 unique UUIDs but this does not appear to be happening of the messages in the VM Manager logs are to be believed. 

The confusion here is that the VMs in question do have unique UUIDs and should, I think, in that case be filtered as stated in the documentation.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the above in case I am still misunderstanding something.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

As it states: based on universally unique identifier (UUID)...

Potentially there can be x duplicates of some UUID, thus, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from all those duplicated UUIDs the one which is stated in vmmfilterconf.properties file.
What is needed is some additional parameter to mark a particular UUID entry (parameter determining a particular Cluster/Host).

Hello Oktawian,

Thank you for your quick response. I am a little bit confused as it states in the documentation (from my earlier post)

If I have understood your reply correctly, it doesn't seem to do this. In which case I don't see what the purpose of UUID filtering provides?

I will open an enhancement request as I believe this will be a useful configuration option.

regards, Pete

Hello Pete,

UUID-based filtering will not do any good.
Obviously, VM Manager tool will not be able to differentiate from those found duplicates the one which is meant to be.
vmmfilterconf.properties file contains just a list of UUIDs, it doesn't give any possibility to 'mark' a particular VM.

Nevertheless, based on this thread I'll create an internal idea to extend the UUID-based filtering feature to cover the filtering of Hypervisor hosts.
Such feature would allow to avoid the duplicated UUIDs problem where different hosts controls the VMs which the same UUID. 

Please up open an idea (former RFE) to push some pressure on such new feature:
https://integration-development.ideas.ibm.com/?project=ILMT

New ILMT (9.2.33) with BigFix (10.0.9.21) using MS-SQL installed on Windows 2019. Required for 2 specific VM instances running under VMware to meet sub-capacity license requirements.

ILMT VM Managers configured to scan each VMware instance as Vmotion is used in the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure is owned and managed by a different group within the same organisation and the customer has been given read access to the complete VM infrastructure to meet ILMT requirements. When processing the VM Manager data multiple messages in the VM Manager logs indicating "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" are seen and the VM Manager status in ILMT is set to "OK - duplicated UUIDs discarded"

Reviewing the VM Manager logs it was established that the duplicates are for other VM instances unrelated to the 2 VM instances required for sub-capacity licensing and could therefore be ignored (as the customer cannot request other groups within the organisation to resolve the duplicate UUIDs). 

We then enabled and configured UUID-based virtual machine filtering (following the instructions here Selecting virtual machines for UUID-based filtering ) hoping that it would result in the VM Manager status being set to OK. However the VM Manager status results in the same status as before and the VM Manager logs still show the "REMOVING DUPLICATED GUEST" messages.

Can you tell me if this is working "as designed" or is there some other configuration steps required to make the filtering work as expected?

Thanks for your help