Need help I want to enable software meeting to all the exe’s. for many software’s we are creating rules and taking usage reports. I missed many software’s to add in metering. I want know how to enable metering for the all the exe’s and what will be the impact on sccm if I do this.

You cannot enable "meter all *.exe files"; you would have to create a single rule for each .exe. The impact would be rather high on the siteserver so I don't recommand going that route.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

On top of that there is a limit of about 1000 rules too.http://www.enhansoft.com/

why would you want to enable software metering for all files? It was they way it worked back in SMS 2.0, and that's didn't turn out that well.Kent Agerlund | My blogs: http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/ and http://scug.dk/ | Twitter @Agerlund | Linkedin: /kentagerlund

On top of that there is a limit of about 1000 rules too. http://www.enhansoft.com/ Is that actually documented anywhere? The only thing I've seen 1000 rules mentioned was in this test. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892809.aspx I suppose I could sit and try to create 1000 rules. But since I'm only at about 120, it would take a while. :) Regards, Tom Watson, E-Mail: Tom_...@... Blog: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/tom_watson

The 1,000 rule limit (based on the link you provided, Tom), is a best practice thing. Basically, they tested having 1,000 SW metering rules enabled, when doing a scalability test. That doesn't mean you can't have more, it just means that if you encounter issues with SW metering and you have more than 1,000 rules enabled, if you call for Support, they might (MIGHT) say that it's unsupported to have that many rules. Since you are only at 120 enabled rules, how many do you actually need? We only have 84 rules. We only turn on a SW Metering rule if someone actually says they plan to do something with the information. i.e., they really do plan to track down the people that launch Autocad vs. the people that have it installed, and uninstall Autocad (expensive license) from the machines that don't really use it, and free up the license for someone that would actually use it. Basically, I think you are approaching it from the wrong angle: don't turn on every .exe just because you can. Have a project manager tell you what they need the metering data for, and that they plan to actually do something with the info instead of just saying "ok, nice, everyone has launched notepad.exe within the last 2 months". a 1 second glance at a report of useless information is... useless.Standardize. Simplify. Automate.

My understanding is that this limit is due to policy size, all metering rule are stored within 1 client policy. Although I have not personally test this (Kim O has looked at this), each rule vary in size and that 1000 rules is about as much as the system can handle. IMO each rule should be its own client policy. http://www.enhansoft.com/

Since you are only at 120 enabled rules, how many do you actually need? We only have 84 rules. We only turn on a SW Metering rule if someone actually says they plan to do something with the information. i.e., they really do plan to track down the people that launch Autocad vs. the people that have it installed, and uninstall Autocad (expensive license) from the machines that don't really use it, and free up the license for someone that would actually use it. I just looked. Mine's is closer to 200. 120 was from memory :) I've used rules for all sorts of different scenarios, not just for licensing. Some examples. When replacing apps. e.g. when replacing one VPN agent with another one from a different vendor. It helped track down those people who continued to use the old app and ignored notification e-mails. Timing how long certain tasks have been taking. e.g. virus scans. These can help show different teams that maybe they need to rethink how their scanning policies are configured. Apps that simply shouldn't be getting run. These range from password crackers, apps that aren't supported, peer-to-peer sw etc. Crash handling programs. e.g. tracking OFFLB.EXE or OFFDIAG.EXE can show if someone has major problems with their Office install. Who running which "suite". Tracking a suite takes up a number of multiple rules with the same name. That takes the numbers up quite a bit. One bit of software is licensed concurrently. SW Metering handles tracking that. I've gotten to about 200 rules over the course of about 6 or 7 years. Getting to about 1000 would take me to about 2037. I'd be hoping to have retired by then. :) I understand Garth reasoning for a max based on policy size however. P.S. Just about all my rules have been genuine requests from other teams, colleagues etc. A few have been in there just for personal curiosity, but not many. And I know the day I remove a rule is probably the day someone says, "heh, can you do me a report on xxxx"..... P.S. The original poster hasn't replied to any of our suggestions, so I guess we are all just sharing experiences now.Regards, Tom Watson, E-Mail: Tom_...@... Blog: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/tom_watson