Scheduling Software Metering Maintenance Tasks
The four software metering tasks to include in your SMS maintenance and monitoring plan are:
Delete Aged Software Metering Data.
Delete Aged Software Metering Summary Data.
Summarize Software Metering File Usage Data.
Summarize Software Metering Monthly Usage Data.
These tasks are described in the following sections. By default, all four tasks are enabled in the SMS Administrator console. For information about configuring maintenance tasks in the SMS Administrator console, see Chapter 13, "Maintaining and Monitoring SMS Systems."
Note
- You configure the scheduled start times for maintenance tasks in the SMS Administrator console. The Latest start time must be set to a later time than the Start after time. Setting these times too closely (for example, less than 60 minutes apart) might cause the task to not run properly.
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Delete Data Tasks
Summarize Software Metering Tasks
Delete Data Tasks
These maintenance tasks remove old software metering data and summarized data from the SMS site database.
Delete Aged Software Metering Data
Use the Delete Aged Software Metering Data task to delete all summarized software metering data that is older than the number of days specified. Only the latest software metering data is left in the SMS site database.
By default, the task is scheduled to run every day and to delete software metering data that is older than five days. You can configure the number of days to be any number from 2 to 255.
Delete Aged Software Metering Summary Data
Use the Delete Aged Software Metering Summary Data task to delete summarized software metering summary data that is older than the number of days specified. Only the latest summarized data is kept in the SMS site database.
By default, the task is scheduled to run every Sunday and to delete software metering summary data that is older than 270 days. The maximum number of days you can configure it for is 370.
Note
- If the Summarize Software Metering Data task and the Summarize Software Metering Monthly Usage Data task are not enabled, software metering data is not being summarized. In this case, when the Delete Aged Software Metering Summary Data task runs, it does not delete aged software metering data.
Summarize Software Metering Tasks
The Summarize Software Metering tasks perform the data summarization to compress the amount of data in the SMS site database, as described in the "Using Software Metering Data" section earlier of this chapter.
For the two software metering summarization tasks to succeed, software metering data that is at least 12 hours old must exist.
Data summarization runs daily and only runs against usage data that is older than 12 hours. Data summarization is required for all SMS software metering reports to display meaningful data. To understand what is contained in the most current set of summary data, you should know when summarization last occurred. A report for this (called Software metering summarization progress) is included as a sample report in SMS 2003.
Note
- If all the software metering data that is reported by clients is less than 12 hours old when the summarization tasks run, then the Smsdbmon.log file contains an entry indicating that there is no data to summarize. This is likely to occur when you activate software metering for the first time. Subsequent summarization cycles operate normally.
Summarize Software Metering File Usage Data
The Summarize Software Metering File Usage Data task condenses software metering file usage data from multiple records into one general record. This record provides information about the program name, version, language, and number of distinct users over intervals of 15 minutes and one hour. This compresses the amount of data in the SMS site database.
By default, the Summarize Software Metering File Usage Data task runs daily. For every hour and every 15 minute interval within the hour, the task calculates the total number of distinct user/computer combinations that is running the matching program. Within the 15 minute intervals, this approximates the number of concurrent users. For example:
If the same user is using a software program and is logged on to three different computers simultaneously, this counts as three usages.
If three users are logged on to a computer running Terminal Services and all three are running the software program, this counts as three usages.
If the same user starts and stops the software program on the same computer three separate times during the hour, this counts as one usage for that user.
When replicated up the SMS hierarchy, the software metering summary data from each site remains separated from data from the other sites. When the data reaches a parent site, each record is marked with the site code of the site where the usage data was generated. These records can be added together to estimate concurrent program usage in the network.
Summarize Software Metering Monthly Usage Data
The Summarize Software Metering Monthly Usage Data task condenses detailed software metering usage data from multiple records into one general record. This record provides information about the program name, version and language, program running times, number of usages, last usage, user name, and computer name. Data summarization helps compress the amount of data in the SMS site database. Monthly software usage data is sent to the central site.
The summarization information includes the number of times each matching software program ran on a particular computer by a particular user during the month. By default, the task is scheduled to run daily and the summarization period is one month. Software monthly usage data is replicated to the parent site.
To view software metering summarizations, you must either run queries on the summarizations or use SMS reporting. For more information about queries, see Chapter 4, "Managing Collections and Queries." For more information about the SMS reporting tool, see Chapter 11, "Creating Reports."
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