License Service overview

License Service collects and measures the license usage of IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps at the cluster level. You can retrieve this data upon request for monitoring and compliance. You can also retrieve an audit snapshot of the data that is audit evidence.

Note: For IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps, the license service collects usage data for only IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps. Although IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps provides license options not tracked directly by the product, to track usage, you must deploy the IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps License Service on all clusters where IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps is installed.

About License Service

License Service is required for monitoring and measuring license usage of the IBM Cloud Paks® and IBM® stand-alone containerized software in accord with the pricing rule for containerized environments. Manual license measurements are not allowed.

License Service

  • Collects and measures the license usage of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric at the cluster level.
  • Collects and measures the license usage of IBM Cloud Paks and their bundled products that are enabled for reporting and licensed with the Managed Virtual Server (MVS) license metric.
  • Collects and measures the license usage of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) and Processor Value Unit (PVU) metrics at the cluster level of IBM® stand-alone containerized software that is deployed on a cluster and is enabled for reporting. For more information, see License Service for stand-alone products Opens in a new tab.
  • Currently, License Service refreshes the data every 5 minutes. However, this might be subject to change in the future. With this frequency, you can capture changes in a dynamic cloud environment.
  • Provides the API that you can use to retrieve data that outlines the highest license usage on the cluster.
  • Provides the API that you can use to retrieve an audit snapshot that lists the highest license usage values for the requested period for products that are deployed on a cluster.

Note: Only one instance of License Service is deployed per cluster regardless of the number of IBM Cloud Paks and containerized products that you have installed on this cluster.

Supported platforms

  • License Service that is integrated into an IBM Cloud Pak as a part of IBM Cloud Pak® foundational services is supported on Linux® x86_64, Linux® on Power® (ppc64le), and Linux® on IBM Z® and LinuxONE with Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform version 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5.

    Note: To deploy License Service and collect data for IBM Cloud Paks that are deployed on older versions of Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform, such as 3.11 to 4.3, follow the deployment procedure for License Service for stand-alone products Opens in a new tab.

  • You can deploy License Service on other Kubernetes-orchestrated clouds to collect license usage of IBM stand-alone containerized software. For deployment instructions and the full list of supporter platforms, see License Service for stand-alone products Opens in a new tab.

Hardware requirements

License Service uses the following hardware resources:

  • CPU limits: 500 m
  • Memory limits: 512 Mi

Deployment

License Service is automatically deployed as a part of IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps, and has minimal impact on cluster capacity. License Service works in the background and does not require any configuration or user engagement.

To make sure that this service is successfully deployed, see: Validating License Service deployment.

Storage

License Service does not require persistent storage.

Using License Service for container licensing

After the automatic deployment, License Service collects and measures the license usage of the products that are deployed on the cluster. This data is required for compliance and audit purposes. With License Service, you can use the dedicated APIs to retrieve an audit snapshot for the cluster.

Core license metrics

Currently, supported core-based metrics for container licensing are Processor Value Unit (PVU) and Virtual Processor Core (VPC). For core license metrics, you are obliged to use License Service and periodically generate an audit snapshot to fulfill container licensing requirements. License Service is an automatic solution. You do not need to complete any manual actions to prepare the audit snapshot, you only need to generate it. At this point, the audit snapshot is required to be generated at least once a quarter for the last 90 days, and stored for 2 years in a location from which it can be retrieved and delivered to auditors.

Note, that the requirements might change over time. Always make sure to follow the latest requirements that are posted on Passport Advantage.

For more information, see the following resources:

Non-core metrics

License Service additionally collects information about license usage of IBM® software that is enabled for reporting and licensed with other non-core metrics. You can use this data to track the license usage of these products, and determine your entitlement needs. For more information, see Reported metrics.

Best practices

  • It is recommended to generate an audit snapshot report monthly as a precaution.
  • Before decommissioning a cluster, record the license usage of the products that are deployed on this cluster by generating an audit snapshot until the day of decommissioning.
  • Plan your storage to contain regular audit snapshots. The size of an audit snapshot .zip package might vary and depends on the number of products and the range of the reporting period. On average, the size of the package for a starter deployment environment is around 10 KB, and around 100 KB for production environments.

Tracking license usage in multicluster environment

Note: In multicluster environment, the cumulative report is not required for audit.

You can use the data that is collected by License Service from individual clusters to track the cumulative license usage in a multicluster environment. For detailed information, see Tracking license usage in a multicluster environment.

You can use License Service Reporter for that purpose. License Service Reporter is not obligatory. It is an extension of License Service that aggregates license usage data from multiple clusters and gives you clear view for the entire environment. License Service Reporter is deployed on one cluster and uses extra resources for aggregation. To use this functionality, extra configuration is needed. For more information, see Tracking license usage in multicluster environment with License Service Reporter.

If you prefer to track license usage without deploying License Service Reporter, you can follow the non-automated procedure. For more information, see Manually tracking license usage in multicluster environment.