Installing and configuring IBM Licensing and Metering service

License Service is required for monitoring and measuring license usage of IBM Certified Container Software for Connect:Direct for UNIX in accordance with the pricing rule for containerized environments. Manual license measurements are not allowed. Deploy License Service on all clusters where IBM Certified Container Software for Connect:Direct for UNIX is installed.

The IBM Certified Container Software for Connect:Direct for UNIX contains an integrated service for measuring the license usage at the cluster level for license evidence purposes.

Overview

The integrated licensing solution collects and stores the license usage information which can be used for audit purposes and for tracking license consumption in cloud environments. The solution works in the background and does not require any configuration. Only one instance of the License Service is deployed per cluster regardless of the number of containerized products that you have installed on the cluster.

Deploying License Service

Deploy License Service on each cluster where IBM FHIR Server is installed. License Service can be deployed on any Kubernetes based orchestration cluster. For more information about License Service, how to install and use it, see the License Service documentation.

Validating if License Service is deployed on the cluster

To ensure license reporting continuity for license compliance purposes make sure that License Service is successfully deployed. It is recommended to periodically verify whether it is active. To validate whether License Service is deployed and running on the cluster, you can, for example, log into the Kubernetes or Redhat OpenShift cluster and run the following command:
For Kubernetes
kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep ibm-licensing | grep -v operator
For Redhat OpenShift
oc get pods --all-namespaces | grep ibm-licensing | grep -v operator

The following response is a confirmation of successful deployment:

1/1 Running

Archiving license usage data

Remember to archive the license usage evidence before you decommission the cluster where IBM Certified Container Software for Connect:Direct for UNIX Server was deployed. Retrieve the audit snapshot for the period when IBM Certified Container Software for Connect:Direct for UNIX was on the cluster and store it in case of audit.

For more information about the licensing solution, see License Service documentation.