How EXACTLY Does LS Count Assets?

[mhammond]

I received a notification that my scanning license asset limit is currently at 95%. So I am beginning the daunting task of trying to find where assets are being counted, if there are any duplicates, whether I can exclude them, etc.

How does LS ACTUALLY count assets? I've added the numbers up in different reports - Asset Count from Dashboard, IP ranged reports and Location-based reports - and nothing is coming close to the number my scanning server is reporting. The website is pretty vague on description - it boils down to saying "it counts everything but monitors", which really isn't very helpful.

Will the software actually OBEY the exclusion list? I have a few subnets excluded on our network (we have PLC/HMI devices in our manufacturing plant that aren't IT devices, but require a network interface to function) and I have also excluded the random devices like IOS, Android, iPad, iPod ....etc. Doing this has only knocked down my count by a small handful.

What ELSE should I be looking for? Is there some sort of report (other than that of the license page) that can breakdown or break out what is being counted?

I apologize if I placed this in the wrong location, the General Questions area - it wasn't meant to be a 'report' question, but mostly a query to you all as to what else I should be looking for to bring down my asset count.....

[mhammond]

So in other words, having an exclusion list is a wasted feature.

Sure, it's nice for reporting, but it seems that ultimately it's not worth having since it doesn't ACTUALLY exclude anything from the asset count.

[Obi_1_Cinobi]

Cripple.Zero wrote:
So in other words, having an exclusion list is a wasted feature.

Sure, it's nice for reporting, but it seems that ultimately it's not worth having since it doesn't ACTUALLY exclude anything from the asset count.

Scanning exclusions only prevent unwanted assets from being scanned. Excluding an asset from scanning only prevents future scan attempts from taking place. If the asset was already scanned prior to excluding or changing your scanning setup, it will not automatically be removed from your database and it will still count as a licensed asset. You can always delete the asset manually.

More information about scanning exclusions can be found here: https://www.lansweeper.com/knowledgebase/excluding-assets-from-scanning/

[CyberCitizen]

Click on Assets (Top Menu Item)
That is every asset that is included in your license count (minus monitors). Monitors have been excluded as they are attached to a PC and normally are a requirement, plus alot of PC's now days have 2x monitors, so you wouldn't want 3x assets counting towards one user.

That should be every asset that is counting towards your assets.

In our case we have excluded everything except Windows Machines, Printers & Switches as that is all we needed to report on/manage/deploy too. We have also excluded our servers based on hostnames to prevent accidental deployments etc.

I get what you're saying about the phones not being frequently accessed but they are an asset, as such Lansweeper reports them as one. If they are not something that you regularly access I would export them to Excel, then excluded the assets.

One thing to note, just because they are excluded from scanning, if they have already been scanned and created an asset record I believe they still count towards your count. You actually need to remove the asset.

[mhammond]

So what's the point of the exclusion list, if only monitors aren't counted against the license?

For example, I want to have Cisco IP Phones in the database (similar to just HAVING the information about monitors) but I don't want them to be counted against the license because they aren't a frequently accessed asset that needs continuous support.

I also have assets listed, but have "excluded" from scanning because they aren't a true PC or asset we would have to actually manage - they just receive an IP on the network (like an HMI computing device in manufacturing). Those show up as "not scanned" - so do they ALSO count against the license?

[Esben_D]

Strange, did you contact support to let them have a look? With some debug options they could get a better look as to why those IP addresses are not seen as part of the Windows machine.

[vqT4cDoP9iXyMZw]

It's also worth noting, in the current Lansweeper version it seems to be unable to correctly identify and link multiple network interfaces associated with the same asset.

So a laptop may be discovered and counted as an asset on it's wired connection, then discovered and counted again if it appears on wifi. Or a server with multiple NICs will be duplicated and counted multiple times, once for each MAC.

This was less of an issue with the old unlimited scanning licensing model, but since Lansweeper updated their pricing to "assets", they really need to develop a better mechanism to prevent multiples of the same asset/serial number from counting against the overall total.

[Esben_D]

vqT4cDoP9iXyMZwoDUWU wrote:
It's also worth noting, in the current Lansweeper version it seems to be unable to correctly identify and link multiple network interfaces associated with the same asset.

So a laptop may be discovered and counted as an asset on it's wired connection, then discovered and counted again if it appears on wifi. Or a server with multiple NICs will be duplicated and counted multiple times, once for each MAC.

This was less of an issue with the old unlimited scanning licensing model, but since Lansweeper updated their pricing to "assets", they really need to develop a better mechanism to prevent multiples of the same asset/serial number from counting against the overall total.

Windows Computers and servers do not use MAC address as a unique identifier specifically for that reason. This KB article explains how identification is handled: https://www.lansweeper.com/knowledgebase/how-lansweeper-uniquely-identifies-assets/

[vqT4cDoP9iXyMZw]

Esben.D wrote:

vqT4cDoP9iXyMZwoDUWU wrote:
It's also worth noting, in the current Lansweeper version it seems to be unable to correctly identify and link multiple network interfaces associated with the same asset.

So a laptop may be discovered and counted as an asset on it's wired connection, then discovered and counted again if it appears on wifi. Or a server with multiple NICs will be duplicated and counted multiple times, once for each MAC.

This was less of an issue with the old unlimited scanning licensing model, but since Lansweeper updated their pricing to "assets", they really need to develop a better mechanism to prevent multiples of the same asset/serial number from counting against the overall total.

Windows Computers and servers do not use MAC address as a unique identifier specifically for that reason. This KB article explains how identification is handled: https://www.lansweeper.com/knowledgebase/how-lansweeper-uniquely-identifies-assets/

In our case the first instance of the asset is identified as a Windows asset and uses the unique key domain\machinename\1, the subsequent duplicates are created as type Network device with a unique key x.x.x.x\1 where x.x.x.x is another IP address where the machine has been seen by Lansweeper.

[Esben_D]

All assets except monitors are counted. This includes manually created assets, location maps. The easiest way of looking at it is just going to the Assets tab. Everything on that page (except monitors again) counts.