JSS Licensing Question(s)

[mattskaj]

What happens when the number of systems in your casper inventory exceeds the number of systems you are licensed for? WIll things start breaking or not functioning anymore in the JSS? WIll casper arbitrarily decide which machines it will manage?

We have a license for 585 machines but currently show 725 in inventory (and in red under the general jss settings tab). About 260 of those machines are no longer in use but we have to maintain inventory records for them for both legal and accounting purposes. Is there a way to reclaim those licenses? Would being over our "limit" affect the performance of the jss or client machines in any way. We do seem to be having an issue lately with machines that do not check in and I was wondering if this might be related.

[talkingmoose]

Casper doesn't have any booby traps that will trigger when you exceed your license count. You just true-up licensing once per year.

[mm2270]

Yeah, the only thing you may notice is an alert symbol next to the General icon in Settings in your JSS. this is just to alert you to the fact that you have more managed Macs than licenses. JAMF is pretty lenient with this. If you only go over a few, you can probably just true up when it comes time to renew your licenses. If you went over by a large amount, you should contact your account manager to work that out.

But nothing will stop working in the Casper Suite. back when I was trialing Casper Suite for the first time at another company I worked for, the trial license was only set for 20 or so Macs, and I recon'ed in and started managing about 200+ I knew we were going to purchase a full license, so I had no concerns about doing that.

[mattskaj]

Thanks for helping me rule that out.

[ernstcs]

Would be cool to link license counts to restricted applications at that point and start blocking the systems that come in over the limit.

[mm2270 · Accepted solution]

Oh, and regarding the other part of your question, there is a way to reclaim licenses without losing the inventory. The total licenses only applies to Macs that are actively managed. If you identify the Macs that are no longer in use, and you don't plan on redeploying them, follow these steps:

- Go into each Mac's details tab, and under the Computer Information section, click the little (-) button in the upper right

- Uncheck the "Manage this Computer" checkbox. Click Save

That's it. Note though that once you do this, the management account information for that Mac gets removed from the MySQL db. The Mac will no longer use a license, but it will still do its regular check in with the JSS, (Last Check in time) because that's controlled by a LaunchAgent on the Mac itself. No further inventory will get submitted from that Mac though, it will no longer show up in Smart Groups or be available in Casper Remote for manual pushes.

Repeat this for any other Macs you need to un-manage. The license use count will drop, but those Macs will still show up in the regular Inventory reports, unless you use Managed > is > Managed as part of your criteria when doing searches.

Hope that helps.

[bentoms]

@Mike, Unmanaged devices still require a license. Albeit one that is around 50% of a normal license.

[mm2270]

@Ben, that has not been my experience. Are you sure you're not referring to a Recon Suite scenario? In our Casper Suite setup if I un-manage Macs, they no longer use up a license when i go into Settings > General. For example, if it states I have 1000 licenses, and it shows I have 1001 Managed Macs, if I un-manage one, the usage count drops back down to 1000 and shows 1 unmanaged device, but it no longer shows being out of compliance.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but this has been my actual experience when doing this. Maybe someone from JAMF can confirm one way or the other. I've never heard of a 50% cost of a normal license outside of the Recon Suite.

Edit: OK, actually I think I see what you're saying now. It shows my managed licenses as being in compliance, but states I have 0 available for unmanaged devices. Now I get it. My bad.
Still, I think un-managing any Macs no longer in use is a good method to keep them around for awhile for compliance reasons without using up a real license, and it also takes them out of any Smart Groups, policies and other things that can foul up your management plans.

[stevewood]

@Mike is correct, with the Casper Suite you can have machines unmanaged and not require a license for them. That's how we manage machines that are sent back on lease or sold to employees.

[bentoms]

Guys, I got the below from my JAMF account rep in Feb:

There is an charge for any unmanaged OS X devices. It's around 50% the charge of normal Annual Maintenance, but I can give you an accurate quote if you guys have an estimate for how many unmanaged devices you might have in your JSS. There isn't any charge for unmanaged mobile devices. Same idea for Reconning PC clients. You would just need to pay for any unmanaged clients in the JSS. You can definitely Recon a machine to get inventory, and then just delete it out of the JSS, or migrate the records to something outside of the JSS.

[mm2270]

Hmm, I get the feeling this may be a bit of a gray area at JAMF. I'm sure on paper there is a charge for any unmanaged clients, but in practice, I'm not sure how much they enforce this, especially for customers running the full Casper Suite. I can completely understand it in the case of Recon Suite since the whole point of Recon is Inventory alone. But an unmanaged Mac in Casper Suite doesn't have much value other than the inventory information up to the point that it became unmanaged. You can't do anything with it after that until it becomes managed again, and thus uses up a license.
My guess is if you have a small number of unmanaged systems, they probably don't care too much. If you have several hundred, that's another story.

[willpower]

Matt,
Call me: 202-7750
You know the area code.
Will Samples