Licensing for IBM Library Support for Spring

This document provides information about licensing and entitlements for IBM Library Support for Spring.

Important: This licensing guide provides supplementary information to assist you in deploying the Program that you 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 IBM Library Support for Spring 1.0) 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.

Full licenses

Full licenses provide the option to use any of the enumerated and entitled products at the specified ratio consumptions.

To review the license agreements for any of the following full IBM Library Support for Spring licenses, click the link for that license:

What do you get with your purchase of IBM Library Support for Spring, and what is your entitlement?

IBM Library Support for Spring provides security updates and expert assistance tailored to enterprise environments. The product is supported x86, Linux on Power, and Linux for IBM z platforms.

If you have a perpetual license entitlement and do not renew Subscription and Support, your support access key expires, and you are no longer able to download product images from the IBM entitled registry (cp.icr,io). Therefore, you lose access to the product images unless you mirror the product images from the IBM entitled registry to a client-owned registry (before Subscription and Support lapses) and configure your system to pull from this registry.

Support availability for each IBM Library Support for Spring 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.

License ratio topics

License ratio

Deployed instances of capabilities in IBM Library Support for Spring 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 IBM Library Support for Spring is required for 1 VPC of an IBM or Red Hat product that contains Spring Boot or Spring Framework for either production or non-production usage.

When used with a non-IBM deployment of Spring Boot or Spring Framework, 1 VPC of IBM Library Support for Spring is required for each deployment of the product with Spring Boot or Spring Framework.

Entitlements of IBM Library Support for Spring that are used in these ratios can be reused in other ratios at any time, provided 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 Library Support for Spring license entitlements according to the ratio?
Table 1. Production and non-production license ratio
Capability VPC ratio (capability : IBM Library Support for Spring)
IBM or Red Hat product with Spring Boot or Spring Framework 1:1
Non-IBM, non-Red Hat product with Spring Boot or Spring Framework 1:1 (per deployment of non-IBM, non-Red Hat product)
Note: Production and non-production usage have the same consumption ratios.

Reporting deployment and usage of IBM Library Support for Spring

IBM Library Support for Spring reporting using the VPC metric

You are responsible for deployment usage, tracking, and reporting. If you use IBM Library Support for Spring with a Java™ runtime that is entitled by an IBM product, use IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or IBM Licensing Service (ILS) to track your entitlement. If you use IBM Library Support for Spring with a Java runtime that is entitled by a Red Hat product, use Red Hat licensing tools. In all other cases, you are responsible for the deployment usage, tracking, and reporting in alignment with the IBM license metric, VPC. Furthermore, you must provide deployment usage, tracking, and reporting to IBM upon request. In all circumstances, do not be use IBM Library Support for Spring if the deployment is incongruent with the IBM license metric, VPC.

You must align entitlement of IBM Library Support for Spring with the following on a per site basis:
  1. Spring usage with underlining Java runtime from an IBM product must have a 1:1 entitlement ratio for the entire entitled footprint per the IBM entitlement. Examples of IBM runtimes include the following products:
    • IBM WebSphere® Application Server
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core
  2. Spring usage with underlining Java runtime from an IBM product must have a 1:1 entitlement ratio for the entire entitled footprint per the Red Hat entitlement. Examples of Red Hat runtimes include the following products:
    • Red Hat JBoss EAP
    • Red Hat Quarkus
    • Red Hat JBoss Web Server
  3. Spring usage with underlining Java runtime from a non-IBM, non-Red Hat product must have a 1:1 entitlement ratio for the entire deployed footprint of the Java runtime. Examples of non-IBM, non-Red Hat runtimes include the following products:
    • Apache Tomcat
    • Oracle WebLogic

Deployments under IBM Library Support for Spring 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 Library Support for Spring VPC entitlements, the license service available to IBM Library Support for Spring 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 Library Support for Spring entitlements.

You can also report deployment aggregates for each Red Hat OpenShift cluster to provide a high-water mark of deployment to track against client IBM Library Support for Spring entitlements.

For more information about the IBM Cloud Platform License Service as used by deployments of IBM Library Support for Spring, see IBM Licensing Service.

Support

Support for IBM Library Support for Spring is only for security vulnerabilities. Support tickets cannot be opened for new features, feature enhancements, or transitive dependencies.