latoga’s Guide to My VMware
- Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
- My VMware Quick Overview
- My VMware Users and Roles
- My VMware for Most of Us
- My VMware for the Super Us(er)
- Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of
For Super Users and the Procurement Contacts, please consider these two users interchangeably unless otherwise noted, the key items of note about My VMware is how to manage licnese keys and Orders/Contracts. The new portal has a number of features that provide more control to Super Users and Procurement Contacts regarding distributing license keys across their organization as well as keeping all those keys organized.
I urge all Super Users to take some time to become familiar with My VMware and the new level of visibility they have to Accounts and Entitlements for their organizations. They should also keep in mind that changes they make to License Key organizations can have impact to other My VMware users within their organizations.
Orders/Contracts
As part of the My VMware launch, there was also a consolidation of account records within the VMware Orders/Contracts system. Over the years a single company may have had multiple people (say from different Business Units) buy licenses from VMware. Each order could have created a separate record in the VMware systems. My VMware worked to consolidate all these record under the Super User (with some exceptions for larger customers). As a result, the Super User will be able to see all orders, support contracts, license keys, and Support Requests within their organization.
It is still possible that any user within My VMware would have access to multiple Accounts. Any user can switch between accounts by using the dropdown in the upper right hand corner of My VMware. The portal only allows you to work within one Account at a time. So if you don’t see something that you are expecting to be within your portal, check to make sure you are working within the correct Account.
Software License Keys
First, a quick note about ELAs: the ELA license keys are typically assigned to the Super User. One of the biggest advantages of My VMware is the increased control over ELA key distribution provided to the Super User. Prior ELA customer usually ended up with multiple people inside their organization with access to the full ELA key; under My VMware the Super user can divide ELA keys and give access to a subset of the ELA to those who need it, and just the number of licenses they need.
The big change in My VMware is the ability to organize license keys into folders. Everyone has a default “Home” Folder and if you were a PLA or SLA in the old system, a folder with their full name in which all your license keys were deposited. Super Users will see in their named folder the keys for which they were PLA; they might also see folders with the names of other individuals in your company that were PLA for other orders.You will now have the ability to organize these keys in a way that makes sense for your organization. I can foresee this being broken down by Business Unit or Group Name and then possible further by physical location the licenses are deployed (see below screen shot with mocked up example).
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My VMware Move License Keys Screen
Some thought should be put into the organization of the License Keys by the Super User. The process of moving and granting permissions to license keys contains a number of steps…you won’t want to be redoing this once you start. See the My VMware Gotchas before starting.
Super Users will want to communicate and coordinate across all the VMware users within their organization before doing major organization of keys within folders and granting access to these folders. If a Super User moves license keys around from folders with another User’s name or renames those folders those changes will instantly appear within those User’s accounts. This could be confusing with adequate communication as users will have see their folder names and permissions change between two logins.
Full Details in the Knowledge Base:
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