Verifying license compliance

Verify that your Tivoli® Storage Manager solution complies with the provisions of your licensing agreement. By verifying compliance regularly, you can track trends in data growth or processor value unit (PVU) usage. Use this information to plan for future license purchasing.

About this task

The method for verifying license compliance varies depending on the provisions of your Tivoli Storage Manager licensing agreement:

Front-end capacity licensing: The front-end model determines license requirements based on the amount of primary data that is reported as being backed up by clients. Clients include applications, virtual machines, and systems.

Back-end capacity licensing

The back-end model determines license requirements based on the terabytes of data that are stored in Tivoli Storage Manager primary storage pools and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack repositories.

Tips:

To ensure the accuracy of front-end and back-end capacity estimates, install the latest version of the client software on each client node.
The front-end and back-end capacity information in the Operations Center is for planning and estimation purposes.

PVU licensing: The PVU model is based on the use of PVUs by server devices.
Important: The PVU calculations that are provided by Tivoli Storage Manager are considered estimates and are not legally binding. The PVU licensing information that is reported by Tivoli Storage Manager is not considered an acceptable substitute for the IBM® License Metric Tool.

For the latest information about licensing models, see the information about comparing bundles at the product family website. If you have questions or concerns about licensing requirements, contact your Tivoli Storage Manager software provider.

Procedure

To monitor license compliance, complete the steps that correspond to the provisions of your licensing agreement.

Tip: The Operations Center provides an email report that summarizes front-end and back-end capacity usage. Reports can be sent automatically to one or more recipients on a regular basis. To configure and manage email reports, click Reports on the Operations Center menu bar.

Option	Description
Front-end model	On the Operations Center menu bar, hover over the settings icon and click Licensing. The front-end capacity estimate is displayed on the Front-end Usage page. If a value is displayed in the Not Reporting column, click the number to identify clients that did not report capacity usage. To estimate capacity for clients that did not report capacity usage, go to the following FTP site, which provides measuring tools and instructions: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/front_end_capacity_measurement_tools Follow the instructions in the latest available licensing guide to measure front-end capacity by script. Add the Operations Center estimate and any estimates that you obtained by using a script. Verify that the estimated capacity complies with your licensing agreement.
Back-end model	Restriction: You cannot use the Operations Center to monitor back-end capacity usage for replicated clients if the source and target replication servers do not use the same policy settings. For information about how to estimate capacity usage for these clients, go to the following technote: FAQs about the Tivoli Storage Manager backend capacity-based licensing programs. On the Operations Center menu bar, hover over the settings icon and click Licensing. Click the Back-end tab. Verify that the estimated amount of data complies with your licensing agreement.
PVU model	Follow the instructions in Assessing compliance with the PVU licensing model.