Starting on July 2, 2019, IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery will tighten enforcement of service plans.

As a result, depending on your usage and your plan, your existing toolchains may be impacted, or you may see your charges increase. Continue reading to understand if you will be affected and how you can track your current plan usage.

IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery capabilities

IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery (CD) provides a core set of collaborative DevOps tools for developing and delivering cloud applications, including the following:

• Git Repositories and Issue Tracking to store source code and manage project tasks.
• A Delivery Pipeline to orchestrate application delivery. In a pipeline, sequences of stages retrieve input and run jobs, such as builds, tests, and deployments.
• A Web IDE to develop code.
• Integrations to a variety of other popular development, test, management, and collaboration tools.

IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery plans

IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery currently offers two plans:

• Lite: A free plan that allows users to engage with the complete set of features, with the following limits:
  • Up to five users per Organization or Resource Group.
  • Up to 500 Delivery Pipeline jobs run per Organization or Resource Group per month.
  • Up to 500 MB of private Git Repos and Issue Tracking storage per Organization or Resource Group.
• Professional: A paid subscription plan charged by the number of authorized users of the CD service within an Organization or Resource Group per month. The plan includes the following:
  • No preset limit on the number of Delivery Pipeline jobs run per Organization or Resource Group per month.
  • No preset limit on the amount of private Git Repos storage per Organization or Resource Group.

How does Plan Enforcement affect my Continuous Delivery usage?

With the upcoming changes, you may be impacted in the following ways:

• A toolchain must be linked to a CD service in order for the Delivery Pipeline run. If your toolchain is not linked to a CD service, you (or your account owner) will be required to create a CD service for the Resource Group that contains the toolchain. Remember that, at most, you can have one Lite service per account, so if you plan to have toolchains in more than one Organization or Resource Group or in multiple regions, we recommend you use the Professional plan.
• Users of the CD service will be automatically added to the list of “Authorized Users.” If you wish to prevent users from accessing toolchains and being automatically added, you can use IAM to remove their access to the Resource Group containing the toolchain or the toolchain itself. See the documentation for more details. 
• If you are using the Lite plan with more than five authorized users, the pipelines will no longer execute, pushes to Git Repos will be disabled, and DevOps Insights will be disabled. You can fix this immediately by either reducing the number of users or upgrading to the Professional plan.
• If you are using the Lite plan, after 500 Delivery Pipeline jobs are executed during a month, pipelines will not execute, pushes to Git Repos will be disabled, and DevOps Insights will be disabled, for the remainder of that billing period. You can fix this immediately by upgrading to the Professional plan or by keeping the job execution count below the limit of 500 in future billing periods.

How can I check on my usage?

1. Check that you have a Continuous Delivery service for each group that needs one

• Navigate to the Resource List for your IBM Cloud account. 
• In the Name column, in the filter text box, type Continuous Delivery to show your existing services. Continuous Delivery will appear either in the Cloud Foundry Services list if you are using Cloud Foundry Organizations or in the Services list if you are using Resource Groups.
• For each Resource Group containing toolchains:
  • Select the Resource Group from the Group column filter drop-down.
  • Verify you have a Continuous Delivery service. 
  • If you do not have one, create one in the Resource Group:
    • Select Create Resource.
    • In the filter text box, type continuous delivery.
    • Select the Continuous Delivery service.
    • Select the Region and Resource Group in which the toolchains exist.
    • Select your preferred plan. Remember that at most you can have one Lite service per account.
  • Note: New instances of the Continuous Delivery service can only belong to a Resource Group. If you are missing a CD service for an Organization that has toolchains, you will need to either recreate the toolchains in a Resource Group or contact IBM Support for help.

2. Check the list of Authorized Users in the CD service

• Navigate to the Resource List for your IBM Cloud account.
• In the Name column, in the filter text box, type Continuous Delivery to show your existing services.
• For each service, select the hyperlink in the Name column.
• View, add, or remove users from the list of Authorized Users as needed.
  • Note: Users will also be automatically added or re-added when they use the CD service. If you wish to prevent users from accessing toolchains and being automatically added, you can use IAM to remove their access to the Resource Group containing the toolchain or the toolchain itself. See the documentation for more details.

3. Check your monthly pipeline executions

• From the top navigation, select Manage > Billing and usage.

• Select Usage from the left navigation menu or the tile on the page.
• In the Services section, scroll down to locate the Continuous Delivery service(s).
• Select View Plans for the service.
• Select View Details.
• Look for the metric JOB_EXECUTIONS_PER_MONTH.

• Note that the AUTHORIZED_USERS_PER_MONTH is computed based on a monthly average of users counted daily. 

How to upgrade to the Professional plan 

• Navigate to the Resource List for your IBM Cloud account.
• In the Name column, in the filter text box, enter Continuous Delivery to show your existing services.
• For each service, select the hyperlink in the Name column.
• In the left-horizontal navigation links, select Plan.
• Select the Professional plan and save your changes.

Additional help

For more info, see our documentation. If you have any concerns or questions about your bill, please contact IBM Support. If you have general questions or need help with any issue related to Continuous Delivery usage, feel free to interact directly with the development team in our public Slack channel. We’d love to hear your feedback.