Licensing for Cloud Pak for Applications

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Learn about licensing and entitlements for IBM Cloud Pak® for Applications.

Important: This licensing guide provides supplementary information to assist you in deploying the programs you have licensed from IBM within your purchased entitlement. Your license agreement (such as the IBM International Program License Agreement (IPLA) or equivalent, and its transaction documents, including the License Information for Cloud Pak for Applications 5.3) is the sole and complete agreement between you and IBM regarding use of the program.

Listing of licenses by type

This product supports the following license metrics as a unit of measure for usage of the licensed software:

  • Virtual Processor Core (VPC)

You can learn about license metric definition and guidance at Passport Advantage / Passport Common License Types & Definitions.

These licenses are used when you create instances of the Cloud Pak components, in the spec.license.license field of each custom resource:

Full licenses

Full licenses provide the option to use any of the enumerated and entitled products, including Red Hat® OpenShift®, at the specified ratio consumptions.

To review the license agreements for any of the following full IBM Cloud Pak for Applications licenses, click the link for that license:

Reserved licenses

Reserved licenses do not include Red Hat OpenShift entitlement. They are intended for organizations that either have an existing Red Hat OpenShift entitlement, or commit to using Cloud Pak for Applications on public cloud environments with managed Red Hat OpenShift. Prior IBM approval is required.

The reserved IBM Cloud Pak for Applications license can be found here:

Table of license version
Table 1. Table of license versions

Information about the license for each edition is provided
License Usage Description
L-MWCC-MJUFFE Production or nonproduction IBM Cloud Pak for Applications Advanced 5.3
L-DKPT-XTGT7Z Production or nonproduction IBM Cloud Pak for Applications Standard 5.3
L-VCND-JS4CMW Production or nonproduction IBM Cloud Pak for Applications Limited 5.3
Note: Limited edition licenses do not include Red Hat OpenShift entitlement. These licenses are provided to organizations that have an existing Red Hat OpenShift entitlement or plan to use their license only on public cloud environments with managed Red Hat OpenShift. Prior IBM approval is required.

What do you get with your purchase of Cloud Pak for Applications, and what is your entitlement?

IBM Cloud Pak for Applications offers an enterprise-ready, containerized software solution for modernizing existing applications and developing new cloud-native apps that run on Red Hat OpenShift. The product is supported on both x86, Linux on Power, and Linux for IBM z.

The program contains bundled offerings that include:
The program contains component offerings that include:

These offerings can be run in containers as a part of the program or as stand-alone deployments (with the exception of Red Hat Runtimes) of these offerings outside of IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. Licensing for IBM Cloud Pak for Applications is either perpetual, monthly, or a subscription license. Not all offerings or capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Applications are supported currently on Linux on Power or Linux on IBM z.

When you deploy bundled offerings (such as WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core) under the IBM Cloud Pak for Applications license, you must not exceed the maximum entitlement at any time. Deployments can include a mix of different deployed offerings, either standalone, or in Cloud Pak for Applications, or a combination of both. Customers can change the deployed offerings at any time as long as they never exceed their maximum entitlement. Deployment of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is not required for deployment of bundled offerings within IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. Deployment of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform can be utilized for any offerings that are not bundled with Cloud Pak for Applications.

If customers with perpetual license entitlement do not renew Subscription and Support, their support access key expires, and they are no longer able to download product images from the IBM entitled registry (cp.icr,io). They therefore lose access to the product images unless they mirror the product images from the IBM entitled registry to a customer-owned registry (before Subscription and Support lapses) and configure their system to pull from this registry.

Support availability for each Cloud Pak for Applications release follows the published support model as described in the announcement letter. For an updated view of which releases are supported and whether fixes are available for each release, review the Support page.

Upgrading licenses

Clients with the Standard or Limited editions can upgrade to the Advanced edition.

Clients with any of the following products can upgrade to the Advanced edition: WebSphere Hybrid Edition, WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core, WebSphere Automation.

License ratio topics

License ratio

Deployed instances of capabilities in Cloud Pak for Applications are charged at different rates based on their ratios. An example of ratio use that is provided in the Production and non-production license ratio table is that 1 VPC of Cloud Pak for Applications is needed for 8 VPCs of WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core deployment for either production or non-production usage.

Entitlements of Cloud Pak for Applications that are used in these ratios can be reused in other ratios at any time, provided that the total entitlement is not exceeded. There is no limit to the number of times that entitlements can be used in different combinations.

What consumes IBM Cloud Pak for Applications license entitlements according to the ratio?
Table 2. Production and non-production license ratio for Cloud Pak for Applications Advanced

For each VPC of Cloud Pak for Applications Advanced, the allowable number of deployments of the indicated product is provided
Capability VPC ratio (Quantity of deployed product : Cloud Pak for Applications Advanced entitlement)
Red Hat OpenShift 5:2
or
Red Hat OpenShift with Red Hat Runtimes 5:2
Red Hat OpenShift with WebSphere Application Server Liberty 5:2
Red Hat OpenShift with WebSphere Automation 5:2
Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Runtimes, WebSphere Application Server, and WebSphere Automation 5:2
Red Hat Runtimes 3:2
WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment or WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty 3:2
WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Application Server Liberty 11:2
WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core 11:1
WebSphere Automation 6:1
IBM Fusion Limited (usage 12 TB per Red Hat OpenShift cluster)

Java / IBM Semeru (with WebSphere Application Server Liberty)

IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor

IBM Mono2Micro

WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit

Red Hat Migration Toolkit

 Unlimited
Table 3. Production and non-production license ratio for Cloud Pak for Applications Standard

For each VPC of Cloud Pak for Applications Standard, the allowable number of deployments of the indicated product is provided
Capability VPC ratio (Quantity of deployed product : Cloud Pak for Applications Standard entitlement)
Red Hat OpenShift 1:1
Red Hat OpenShift with Red Hat Runtimes 1:1
Red Hat OpenShift with Liberty 1:1
Red Hat Runtimes 1:1
WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment or WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment 1:1
WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Application Server Liberty 4:1
WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core 8:1

Java / IBM Semeru (with WebSphere Application Server Liberty)

IBM Transformation Advisor

IBM Mono2Micro

WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit

Red Hat Migration Toolkit

 Unlimited
Table 4. Production and non-production license ratio for Cloud Pak for Applications Limited

For each VPC of Cloud Pak for Applications Limited, the allowable number of deployments of the indicated product is provided
Capability VPC ratio (Quantity of deployed product : Cloud Pak for Applications Limited entitlement)
WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment or WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment 1:1
WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Application Server Liberty 4:1
WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core 8:1

Java / IBM Semeru (with WebSphere Application Server Liberty)

IBM Transformation Advisor

IBM Mono2Micro

WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit

 Unlimited
Note: Production and non-production usage have the same consumption ratios.

To review your Cloud Pak for Applications entitlements and to convert them into product entitlements using the Production and non-production license ratio table, use the conversion calculator at IBM Software Central. An IBMid is required; create an account if you do not already have one. After you log in, click Conversion calculators in the main navigation panel.

Noncharged entitlements for Cloud Pak for Applications

Deployment ratios apply to the bundled programs within Cloud Pak for Applications only. Additional Cloud Pak for Applications capabilities or components, such as IBM Transformation Advisor, IBM Mono2Micro, and WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit, can be deployed without requiring Cloud Pak for Applications VPCs to be counted against their deployment.

How add-ons affect your entitlement

If you purchase IBM® Modernization Runtime Environment for Java™ as an add-on to Cloud Pak for Applications and want to understand how it affects your entitlement, see Licensing for IBM Modernization Runtime Environment for Java.

Reporting on deployment inside and across Red Hat OpenShift clusters

IBM Cloud Pak for Applications reporting using the VPC metric

Deployments under IBM Cloud Pak for Applications entitlement can continue to be deployed on the same hardware, and in the same VMs as previously measured and reported with PVUs. Recent updates to IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) now allow it to track deployments of software programs entitled under VPCs. Use ILMT to keep track of software deployed in VMs and entitled under VPCs.

For containers under IBM Cloud Pak for Applications VPC entitlements, the license service available to Cloud Pak deployments can be configured to report the deployments of each bundled offering in each container. It can also report the container size and how that relates—using the VPC-to-license ratio—to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications entitlements.

Figure 1. License server report of deployments of each bundled offering in each container

License server report of deployments of each bundled offering in each container

This deployment reporting is aggregated for each Red Hat OpenShift cluster to provide a high-water mark of deployment to track against customer IBM Cloud Pak for Applications entitlements.

Figure 2. License server report aggregated for each Red Hat OpenShift cluster

License server report aggregated for each Red Hat OpenShift cluster

For more information, see Tracking and reporting entitlements with IBM License Metric Tool and IBM Licensing Service.

Differences in license terms

The license terms for Cloud Pak for Applications supersede the license terms of the bundled offerings. However, this policy applies only when there is a conflict of terms. Terms that apply to the bundled programs still apply, if not superseded.