Licensing

View the capacity of the storage systems that IBM Spectrum Control monitors in your environment. Then, check the records of the licenses that you purchased to determine how much additional storage can be monitored before you're no longer covered.

To determine how many licenses are needed for the capacity and enclosures that you monitor, complete these steps on the Settings > Licensing page:

Know your licenses.
Understand the licensing models.
Select the license model for each storage system.
Update any settings that were not automatically updated or correctly identified for each storage system.
Determine if you're covered.

1. Know your licenses

To get a list of the licenses that you purchased, complete one or more of these actions:

Contact the person within your organization who originally purchased the licenses.
Contact your IBM® seller or IBM Business Partner.
Go to Passport Advantage® Online.

2. Understand the licensing models

The licenses that you purchased determine which license models and values on the Licensing page are used to determine if you're covered. In some cases, a combination of values is used. For example, if you have some storage systems that are licensed by capacity and some that are licensed by enclosure, both the Total SCU and the Total Enclosure License values might be used.

License	License model
IBM Spectrum Control IBM Virtual Storage Center	Measured by the number of storage capacity units (SCUs) that are needed to cover the total usable capacity of the storage systems that IBM Spectrum Control monitors. For more information, see the description of the SCU value on the Licensing page.
IBM Spectrum Control Select Edition IBM Virtual Storage Center for Storwize®	Measured by the number of licenses that are needed for the storage enclosures, modules, or expansions that IBM Spectrum Control monitors. See Calculating the number of enclosure licenses for your storage systems.
IBM Virtual Storage Center Starter Edition IBM Spectrum® Storage Suite	Measured by the total capacity in tebibytes (TiB) that IBM Spectrum Control monitors.

License

License model

IBM Spectrum Control

IBM Virtual Storage Center

Measured by the number of storage capacity units (SCUs) that are needed to cover the total usable capacity of the storage systems that IBM Spectrum Control monitors. For more information, see the description of the SCU value on the Licensing page.

IBM Spectrum Control Select Edition

IBM Virtual Storage Center for Storwize®

Measured by the number of licenses that are needed for the storage enclosures, modules, or expansions that IBM Spectrum Control monitors. See Calculating the number of enclosure licenses for your storage systems.

IBM Virtual Storage Center Starter Edition

IBM Spectrum® Storage Suite

Measured by the total capacity in tebibytes (TiB) that IBM Spectrum Control monitors.

3. Select the license model for each storage system

You must specify the license model for each of your storage systems. The license model, capacity or enclosure, is the type of IBM license that you purchased for the storage system.

License model	Description
Capacity	The category of storage that is used by the storage system is needed to calculate the SCU usage. The category is based on the drive classes of the RAID array and is automatically assigned following a probe. For IBM Spectrum Scale and virtual nodes in IBM Cloud Object Storage, you must specify the storage category.
Enclosure	A probe automatically detects the number of enclosures that the storage system manages and determines the number of enclosure licenses that are required. You can manually update the number of enclosures licenses. After you modify the number of enclosure licenses, that number will not change unless you manually update it again. Probes that detect a different number of enclosure licenses do not modify a number that was manually updated.

License model

Description

Capacity

The category of storage that is used by the storage system is needed to calculate the SCU usage. The category is based on the drive classes of the RAID array and is automatically assigned following a probe.

For IBM Spectrum Scale and virtual nodes in IBM Cloud Object Storage, you must specify the storage category.

Enclosure

A probe automatically detects the number of enclosures that the storage system manages and determines the number of enclosure licenses that are required. You can manually update the number of enclosures licenses.

After you modify the number of enclosure licenses, that number will not change unless you manually update it again. Probes that detect a different number of enclosure licenses do not modify a number that was manually updated.

Tip: For IBM System Storage® DS8000®, the license model is automatically assigned after a probe.

4. Update settings for each storage system

Update any settings that were not automatically updated or correctly identified for your storage systems. Examples of these settings include the number of enclosures in a storage system that were not identified or the drives in a storage system that were not categorized.

Learn more about configuring license settings: For more information about how to update the license settings for your storage systems, see Configuring license values for storage systems.

5. Determine if you're covered

To verify that your purchased licenses cover the capacity and enclosures that are monitored by IBM Spectrum Control, compare the values in your purchased licenses to the values at the top of the page.

Switch details page showing a Brocade switch managed by REST API

Look at Total TiB for these licenses: IBM Virtual Storage Center Entry Edition and IBM Spectrum Storage Suite.
Look at Total SCU for these licenses: IBM Spectrum Control, IBM Virtual Storage Center, and older IBM Spectrum Control licenses that are based on SCU.
Look at Total Enclosure Licenses for these licenses: IBM Spectrum Control Select Edition, IBM Virtual Storage Center for Storwize, and older IBM Spectrum Control licenses that are based on enclosure.

Learn more about license values: For more information about how capacity and enclosure values are calculated for storage systems and storage virtualization systems (such as IBM SAN Volume Controller), see How licensing values are calculated.

What's next

If the Total TiB, Total SCU, and Total Enclosure Licenses values are less than the value of your purchased licenses, you're covered.

If these values are more than the value of your licenses, you can reduce the amount of storage that you're monitoring or contact your IBM seller or IBM Business Partner to purchase additional storage.

Information about the summary values

The following, summary information is shown at the top of the Licensing page:

Capacity License Model: The number in parentheses shows the total number of storage systems that are licensed by storage capacity.
Total TiB: The sum of the capacity to be licensed for all storage systems that use the capacity license model. This value applies if you have the IBM Virtual Storage Center Starter Edition or IBM Spectrum Storage Suite license.
Total SCU: The total number of storage capacity units that you need for the capacity to be licensed for all storage systems that use the capacity license model. This value applies if you have the IBM Spectrum Control or IBM Virtual Storage Center license.
Category 1, 2, 3, or 4: The capacity breakdown of the storage environment by the categories of drives that are used by the storage systems. The breakdown is shown both as a bar chart and as tebibytes (TiB).
Category Info: For storage systems that are licensed by capacity rather than enclosure, a link that describes the categories of drives that are used by RAID arrays.
Enclosure License Model: The number in parentheses shows the total number of storage systems that are licensed by the enclosures that IBM Spectrum Control monitors.
Total Enclosure Licenses: The total number of licenses that are required for storage systems that use the enclosure license model. This value applies if you have the IBM Spectrum Control Select Edition or IBM Virtual Storage Center for Storwize license.

Information about storage system values

The following information is shown for each storage system on the Licensing page:

License Model

The type of IBM Spectrum Control license that was purchased for the storage system. Systems that use the capacity model are charged by the capacity to be licensed or the SCUs. Systems that use the enclosure model are charged by the number of enclosure licenses.

SCU

The number of storage capacity units that the license must cover for the storage system.

An SCU is the measure of capacity by which the license for a storage system is charged. The number of SCUs is based on the drive classes that are used by the storage system and the capacity that is assigned to each category. The following table shows the SCU categories, drive classes, and ratios that are supported by IBM Spectrum Control.

Table 1. Supported SCU licenses, drive classes, and ratios
Category	Drive Classes	Ratio of usable storage to SCU
1	Storage Class Memory (SCM) drives and managed disks on IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud	1 TiB to 1 SCU
2	Flash and Solid-State Drives (SSDs)	1 TiB to 0.847 SCU 1.18 TiB to 1 SCU
3	10K Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Drives, 15K Fibre Channel Drives, and storage systems that use Category 4 drives with advanced architectures	1 TiB to 0.5 SCU 2 TiB to 1 SCU
4	Near Line SAS (NL-SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) Drives	1 TiB to 0.25 SCU 4 TiB to 1 SCU
Tips: Any storage capacity that uses drive classes that are not listed in the table is classified as Category 1. Calculations are rounded up to the nearest whole number.

The following table provides examples that you can use when you want to determine your SCU usage.

Table 2. Examples of SCU usage
Storage category	TiB usable	SCU ratio	Total SCUs
1	42	1	42
2	400	1.18	339
3	800	2	400®
4	1600	4	400
Totals	2842		1181

Category

For capacity license models, the breakdown of the storage environment by the four categories of drives that are used by the storage system. The breakdown is shown as tebibytes (TiB).

For most storage systems, the storage category is set automatically. However, you must set the category for IBM Spectrum Scale and virtual appliances in IBM Cloud Object Storage. If the storage category is not set, IBM Spectrum Control assumes, for the calculations of SCU usage, that Category 1 drives are used.

For enclosure license models, the number of licenses that you need for the storage enclosures that the storage system manages. You can modify the number of enclosure licenses. For example, a probe might detect that two enclosure licenses are needed for a storage system, but you're aware of two external enclosures that were not detected. You calculate that these enclosures needs one license each. In that case, you can change the probe-detected value (2) to the more accurate number of enclosure licenses (4).

Keep in mind the following restrictions before you modify the number of enclosure licenses:

You cannot reduce the number of enclosure licenses to be less than the number that was detected by a probe.
After you modify the number of enclosure licenses, that number will not change unless you manually update it again. Probes that detect a different number of enclosure licenses do not modify a number that was manually updated.

Restriction:

For SAN Volume Controller, if a probe doesn't detect any enclosures, 1 is displayed automatically.
For XIV® systems and IBM Spectrum Accelerate, the number of enclosures can't be edited.

Capacity to be Licensed (TiB)

The capacity that must be licensed for the storage system. Capacity that is reserved for formatting or RAID management is not included. For storage virtualizers and IBM Spectrum Scale, this value includes the capacity that is provided by back-end storage systems that are not being monitored by IBM Spectrum Control.

Capacity from back-end storage systems that are monitored by IBM Spectrum Control is recorded separately on the Licensing page and is not included in this value.

Monitored Back-end Capacity (TiB)

For storage virtualizers and IBM Spectrum Scale, the capacity that is provided by back-end storage systems that are being monitored by IBM Spectrum Control.

This capacity is not included in the capacity to be licensed of the virtualizer or IBM Spectrum Scale. Each monitored back-end storage system has a separate record on the Licensing page.

Unmonitored Back-end Capacity (TiB)

For storage virtualizers, the capacity that is provided by back-end storage systems that are not being monitored by IBM Spectrum Control. This capacity is included in the capacity to be licensed of the virtualizer. Unmonitored storage systems do not have their own record on the Licensing page.

Total Capacity (TiB)

The total capacity of the storage system, including all monitored and unmonitored back-end storage.

Total Capacity = Capacity to be Licensed + Monitored Back-end Capacity

Uncategorized Capacity (TiB)

The total capacity that is not categorized for the storage system. Capacity that is not categorized is also included in the Capacity to be Licensed value.

For most storage systems, IBM Spectrum Control automatically assigns the storage category for the pools on the storage system, based on the technology type of the drives in the pool. However, for IBM Spectrum Scale and virtual appliances on IBM Cloud Object Storage, IBM Spectrum Control cannot determine the storage category.

To ensure that the correct storage category is used, assign the storage category on the Licensing page. If the storage category is not set, IBM Spectrum Control assumes, for the calculations of SCU usage, that Category 1 drives are used.

Enclosure Licenses

The number of enclosure licenses that you need for the storage system.