A very nice tool for capturing the software inventory of your enterprise is our Software Usage Analysis (SUA) add-on product. 

Here is a simplified overview of how to install this add-on into an already existing infrastructure.

For the various official guides visit: (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v26r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.tem.doc/welcome.htm)

Considerations:

I’ve chosen to setup SUA on a physical computer with modest capabilities due to the tiny deployment I’m using.  See the Install guide for details on system requirements.  My server has an Intel E7200 Core 2 Duo processor with 4Gb of RAM.  It is running Microsoft Windows 2008r2 with SP1.  This should work perfectly for my deployment of <50 endpoints.

I will also be using a centralized SQL server that all of my applications are using including the TEM server itself.  It is a Virtual running under Hyper-V but should service my needs.  It too is a Microsoft Windows 2008r2 with SP1 installed and has MS SQL 2008r2 SP1 as well.

Everything is attached to my Microsoft Active Directory domain to make authentication easy.  The SUA services will be running under a special svBigFix account I have setup with appropriate permissions within my domain.

Very simply the installation procedure is as follows:

1. Subscribe/Activate to DSS SAM Content Site
2. Install SUA
3. Configure the services that run SUA and connect to the databases
4. Create the SUA BFEnterprise Database Connections

Let’s begin!

1. Subscribe/Activate to DSS SAM Content Site

Look under the BigFix Management->License Overview for the “DSS SAM” available site.

Activate and subscribe the appropriate computers.  For my tiny deployment, I’m going to subscribe all computers.

Next, we’ll need to activate the three required analyses.

Activate our Installation task for the SUA Scanner that runs on our endpoints.

Then schedule that scanner to run…

And schedule the uploads to occur immediately upon scan completion.

2. Install SUA

Now we’ll install the initial components of SUA… this is pretty straight forward.  Just remember if you are configuring the service as I am with a domain service account.. log into the desktop of this server using that account.

3. Configure the services that run SUA and connect to the Databases

The configuration wizard will automatically open upon completion of step 2. 

Specify the domain level service account that SUA will be configured to “Run As”.

Indicate if you have WebReports installed so SUA can have access to it.

Specify the details surrounding connection to that WebReports server.

Now specify the details of where you want your SUA database.

If this is not a dedicated server, you may want to change the default port.  And even install an SSL certificate if you have one.

The installer will automatically launch the catalogue updater which populates the database with the latest catalogue entries which is published monthly by IBM TEM Headquarters.

The various services are configured and started.

4. Create the SUA BFEnterprise Database Connections

The last stage of installation is to pull up the user GUI and make the connection to BFEnterprise and run a full ETL.

If you have any questions regarding the installation of SUA, leave them below and I’ll respond.

I’ve put together a video guide of this process over on YouTube…