Optional: Enabling SLM tags

Integrating with the IBM license metric tool

IBM License metric tool (ILMT) helps you monitor the license usage of IBM products. The IBM license metric tool helps you determine your full and sub-capacity processor value units (PVU) licensing requirements. It helps calculate the number of PVUs available to installed software, including supported virtualized servers. You can find more information about the tool from the ILMT software products page.

When you install Db2 Big SQL, the installation enables you to generate IBM software license metric tag (slmtag) files. You can use versions of the SLM tool that support IBM the slmtag format to generate license consumption reports. This topic provides you information that allows you to interpret these reports, and to configure the generation of slmtag files.

Each Db2 Big SQL instance generates an slmtag file. The metric monitored is VIRTUAL_SERVER with subtype of NUM_NODES. The values are refreshed every 24 hours.

Understanding the VIRTUAL_SERVER metric

The Virtual Server metric is a unit of measure by which a program can be licensed. A server is a physical computer that is comprised of processing units, memory, input and output capabilities, and executes requested procedures, commands, or applications for one or more users or client devices.

The VIRTUAL_SERVER has the subtype NUM_NODE. NUM_NODES is the number of nodes in an installed cluster environment. NUM_NODES is the sum of all data-nodes (live, dead, decommissioned), name-nodes and secondary name-nodes.

Installing SLM

The software license metric tracking tool is automatically installed in the SLM home directory, /usr/ibmpacks/IBM-Big_SQL/7.1.0.0/common-utils/slm.

Running SLM

After you install Db2 Big SQL, make sure you execute the command [SLM home directory]/bin/slmlogger start to start the SLM tracking tool to generate license metric tag files. The SLM tracking tool launches a long running process which records and writes the license metrics to tag files.

To start the SLM tool, you must belong to a Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) group. Some key SLM commands are:

[SLM home directory]/bin/slmlogger start

Starts SLM

[SLM home directory]/bin/slmlogger status

Generates the status of SLM tracking; the SLM process log is written to the /var/ibm/slm/slm.log file

[SLM home directory]/bin/slmlogger stop

Stops SLM

The current process-id of SLM log process is stored in the /var/ibm/slm/slm.pid file.

The SLM home directory is only installed on the Cloudera Manager head node of a cluster. Once you have completed installing or upgrading, we recommend you execute the start command on the head node.

Configuring the IBM license metric tool log files

By default, the SLM files are stored in the directory /var/ibm/slm on UNIX and UNIX-like systems. You can configure the location and management of those files. The configuration settings are located in [SLM home directory]/conf/slm-config.properties.

You can configure the following properties:

license.metric.logger.output.dir

Location of the IBM Software License Metric Tag files. The default directory is /var/ibm/slim.

license.metric.logger.file.size

Maximum size of an SLMT file before a rotation is performed. The default size is 1 MB.

license.metric.logger.file.number

Maximum number of SLMT archive files to keep in rotations. The default number is 10.

Once you modify the configuration properties you must restart the SLM tracking tool with the start command.