Tracking license usage of stand-alone IBM® Containerized Software

ibm-licensing-operator

To deploy and configure License Service, you require the ibm-licensing-operator that is hosted on GitHub. For more information, see IBM licensing operator repository in GitHub.

Note: License Service is integrated into IBM Cloud Paks. You do not have to deploy it to clusters where IBM Cloud Paks are deployed. License Service should already be there and collect usage data for the IBM containerized products that are enabled for reporting.

Follow the installation guidelines to deploy License Service to a cluster where IBM Cloud Paks are not deployed. For more information, see Installing License Service.

About License Service

License Service is required for monitoring and measuring license usage of the IBM 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 your products 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.

License Service:

• Collects and measures the license usage of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) and Processor Value Unit (PVU) metrics at the cluster level of IBM Containerized products that are enabled for reporting. To learn if your product is enabled for reporting, contact the product support.
• Currently, License Service refreshes the data every 5 minutes. With this frequency, you can capture changes in a dynamic cloud environment. License Service stores the historical licensing data for the last 24 months. However, the frequency and the retention period might be subject to change in the future.
• 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.
• Supports hyperthreading on worker nodes also referred to as Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) or Hyperthreading (HT).

Using License Service for container licensing

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.

For more information about core and noncore metrics that are collected by License Service, see Reported metrics.

License Service collects data that is required for compliance and audit purposes. With License Service, you can retrieve an audit snapshot per cluster without any configuration.

At this point, it is required to generate an audit snapshot at least once a quarter for the last 90 days, and to store it for 2 years in a location from which it could be retrieved and delivered to auditors.

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

For more information, see the following resources:

• IBM Container Licenses on Passport Advantage
• Container licensing FAQs
• How to: Retrieving an audit snapshot