Hi,
This might be a basic question but I dont have a lot of experience with Snow.
So here is the question what I would like to do.
When we change inventory status of a computer we like Snow to free up licenses of that computer. The reason is we have computers coming back from customers with Office and the computers is laying around for months in our inventory as Quarantined.
I wonder if Snow could remove the licenses once it knows that we put the computer into another inventory status.
Hi Robert,
this is why we have the quarantine management which you can configure in the SMACC:
Most customers i know, use this kind of configuration: A computer which didn't report in for 30 days, will be put automatically in quarantine. After another 60 days (so 90 days in total of not reporting in) it will simply be deleted. Of course you can change it to set it to inactive instead of deletion, and check manually in regular intervalls the inactive machines.
However, a quarantine machine still counts application licenses and a snow license.
An inactive machine doesn't count application licenses (it won't be counted in the compliance), but it still "costs" a snow license, since you can still manage the asset.
An archived machine is basically only a text file which neither counts application licenses nor a snow license.
Hope this helps!
/Geoff
Hi Geoffrey,
Exactly what I was looking for. But I think it'll be a problem having them 'Inactive' because we pay for the application license when the computers have it installed. Not sure how other companies do. With this solution it removes it from the system and reduces our costs until Microsoft shows up and find out that the computers that are inactive actually have the application installed.
Possible to come around this, or is a new image with limited applications the only way?
Thanks for your assistance.
Hi Robert, honestly i would always go with a limited applications image. I believe that it's always easier to add applications if needed, than to remove unused afterwards.
As described, i have a few customers who prefer to check this manually because of their internal process: They pull the report of inactive computers once a month and check the machines if they are really offline or need to be reset.
Hope this helps!
/Geoff
Hi Robert,
Have a look at the document on the Snow Support portal called: User Guide: SLM Web User Interface
It says under section 6.2.2:
So archiving the computers would remove the licenses but it also removes the computer from the system, which might not be what you are looking for.
Even if a computer is shelved, it does not mean that it does not need licenses anymore. Some application require the license to stay assigned to the computer for some time even when the software has been removed from the computer.
As a result, a good practice is to re-image computers coming back to stock with the minimum software possible, run a snow scan and then put the computer on shelf.
If your computers in stock have Office Professional installed, licensed per device, then all your shelved computers still all require an Office license.