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One of the major initiatives many customers are pursuing is the widespread implementation of virtualization. Whether they are using virtualization purely to cut costs or whether it is part of their “green” agenda, this initiative will drive an increase in the average utilization of their servers.
As part of the evolution of virtualization technologies, workloads are able to be moved dynamically between physical servers in order to balance workloads and to address backup recovery situations. This of course has an impact on software licensing, requiring news ways to manage licenses as customers take advantage of the virtualization technologies and leverage multi-core chip technologies.
IBM provides a solution to this challenge with our sub-capacity licensing. Sub capacity licensing allows customers to be charged for only the amount of server capacity, logical or virtual, being used by IBM Passport Advantage Processor Value Unit (or “PVU”) based software. This license model requires the use of the IBM License Metric Tool which is a no-charge software tool that helps calculate the number of PVUs for PVU based software installed on eligible software and hardware technologies
What is ILMT?
IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) helps you maintain an up-to-date inventory of the IBM distributed software assets in your IT infrastructure and to measure the processor value units (PVU) available to them. It allows you to ensure compliance with IBM sub-capacity licensing requirements and provides required reports for IBM compliance audits.
Why Do one Need It?
IBM programs in a Virtual Environment requires the deployment of ILMT in a Sub-Capacity environment. No-charge tool determines processor value units licensing requirements
IBM License Metric Tool helps IBM customers determine their full and sub-capacity processor value units (PVU) licensing requirements. It helps calculate the number of PVUs available to installed Passport Advantage PVU-based software, including supported virtualized servers.
Passport Advantage and IBM Passport Advantage Express customers can order this tool at no charge by selecting the IBM License Metric Tool, part number D561HLL.
IBM requires Installation instances are validated by ILMT, both of which provides the functionality to generate the audit reports, ILMT helps customers provide info. about installed hardware and PVU based software for distributed platforms, provide IBM the approved full and sub capacity PVU license reports that are suitable for capacity analysis, audit reporting, and audit preparation,
A quick look at the business architecture of IBM ILMT is as follows,
IBM ILMT imports -> software offering info from the catalogs , hardware PVU information from PVU table, and discovered software and hardware inventory from its agents to produce accurate reports for PVU capacity analysis, PVU audit reports and many others.
The IBM License Metric Tool imports software offering information (from the software catalog), hardware PVU information (from the PVU table), and discovered software and hardware inventory from its agents, to produce accurate reports for; PVU capacity analysis, PVU audit reports, and many others.
The IBM License Metric Tool consists of an admin server with a database , a user interface, and agents that run on the computers where the PVU based software is installed. The License Metric Tool provides a flexible structure that can be adapted for large or small installations, and the diagram shown here illustrates the two-tiered relationship between the metric tool's physical components.
Integrated Solution Console:
IBM License Metric Tool home page provides a dashboard view of License Metric Tool status and access to detailed functions. On the left is the navigator view or the table of contents. While each screen has links to other related License Metric Tool functions, any function can be selected from the navigator list at any time. The ILMT navigation pane has six main entry points:
→ The first is the home screen ( or dashboard), which is currently displayed. The dashboard presents a high-level overview of the infrastructure health, for example agent status, software scan status, and the status of recently generated audit reports.
→ The second is IBM PVU Audit Reports, which supplies the functions required for maintaining audit readiness and analyzing PVU capacity.
→ The third and fourth are Software and Hardware panels respectively, they provide a view of your current software and hardware inventory and management capabilities.
→ The fifth section, Infrastructure, supplies functionality for managing agents, scan groups, and other elements of the infrastructure.
→ The final section, Administration, provides the management of key functions supporting the License Metric Tool product (such as importing the PVU table and software catalog).
IBM License Metric Tool helps:
→ Achieve and maintain compliance with Passport Advantage license terms. The software generates reports to help you determine if you have the appropriate number of PVU license entitlements (full and sub-capacity) for each Passport Advantage PVU-based product installed in your environment.
→ Comply with Passport Advantage sub-capacity offerings license terms. These terms require that you create, verify, adjust, sign and save IBM License Metric Tool reports. With sub-capacity licensing, you are only charged for the logical or virtual server capacity in use by Passport Advantage PVU-based software.
→ Support distributed server virtualization. This tool helps provide PVU-based software inventory reports to help manage diversified workload consolidations onto virtualized servers.
→ Lower liability risks. Now you can reduce the risk of not meeting your Passport Advantage PVU-based contractual licensing conditions, along with avoiding the expense of unplanned license compliance payments.
→ Track IBM PVU-based software inventory. This tool helps maintain that continuously updated inventory of Passport Advantage PVU-based software assets are installed on your network.
References :
IBM Processor Value Unit Sub-Capacity Licensing and the IBM License Metric Tool:
LINK: http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/tivoli/demos/ILMT_SubCapLicensing/index.html?S_CMP=rnav
