Tracking license usage in multicluster environment with License Service Reporter

License Service Reporter is an extension of License Service that aggregates the license usage data from multiple clusters. The collective highest license usage is presented on the user interface.

Retrieving license usage in the multicluster environment with License Service Reporter

The flow of data in the multicluster environment.

Retrieving license usage in the AWS ECS Fargate with License Service Reporter

The flow of data in the AWS FCS Fargate

License Service Reporter

License Service Reporter is an aggregator that adds and analyzes the license usage data from multiple clusters, and retrieves the highest license usage of IBM Cloud Paks and IBM® stand-alone containerized software. Deploy one central License Service Reporter on a selected cluster. License Service Reporter uses extra resources for aggregation.

Currently, License Service Reporter must be deployed in the same namespace as License Service. License Service Reporter is not supported in multitenancy scenario, where License Service is deployed in dedicated control plane.

Supported platforms

License Service Reporter is only supported on Linux® x86_64 on Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform.

Data sources

First data sent to the License Service Reporter covers 30 day period back form the day you configure License Service instance as a data source.
To deliver data to License Service Reporter from multiple clusters, configure the License Service instance for each cluster. Enable License Service to connect and deliver the license usage data from the cluster to the central License Service Reporter.
Some IBM Cloud Paks products, and IBM stand-alone containerized software can be deployed on clusters and in the traditional VM-based environment. To correctly aggregate license usage for these products, License Service Reporter needs to get data from clusters and virtual machines. The license usage data from virtual machines is reported by IBM License Metric Tool. Use License Reporter Proxy, an integration tool, to deliver license usage data from License Metric Tool to License Service Reporter. For more information, see Integration of IBM License Metric Tool with IBM License Service Reporter for aggregated license usage reporting .

Network flow

The network flow in the License Service Reporter environment.

When you configure the data source to report to License Service Reporter, the following actions are performed:

In containerized environments, License Service instance on a cluster activates the sender module. The module periodically connects to the License Service Reporter URL and pushes the license usage data.
In traditional VM-based environment, the License Sender component periodically connects to the License Service Reporter URL and pushes the license usage data. The sender connects via HTTPS and so the 443 port should be open.

The License Service Reporter URL is defined in the ibm-license-service-reporter route in OpenShift console of the cluster where you deployed License Service Reporter. This URL is a hostname of License Service Reporter that should be used by the network administrators for the firewall setup. For more information, see Obtaining License Service Reporter URL.