License Estimation
View the capacity usage that applies against IBM Spectrum Protect Suite license entitlements.
Back-end estimates are collected every seven days. Front-end estimates are collected every twenty-four hours. The collection intervals cannot be modified.
The capacity estimates are for planning purposes. You can compare the information against your current license terms, and can check the estimates regularly to track growth trends for future purchase planning. However, the estimates are not legally binding. For more information about verifying license compliance, see the IBM Spectrum Protect documentation.
Some clients might be managed by the Open Snap Store Manager (OSSM) on behalf of an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server. These OSSM-managed clients enable the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server to back up data to an IBM Spectrum Protect storage pool. The capacity usage for this data must be measured for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server, and is not reported on this License Estimation page. Refer to your license information for approved methods of measuring IBM Spectrum Protect Plus capacity usage.
- Front-end page
- The Front-end page estimates the capacity that would be applied against the
following bundles of IBM Spectrum Protect products:
- IBM Spectrum Protect Suite - Front End
- IBM Spectrum Protect Suite Entry - Front End
These software bundles offer simplified pricing that is based on the size of the primary data that is protected for clients. The licensing cost depends on the amount of data that must be recovered to restore the protected files to the latest recovery point.
For file systems and IBM® Domino® databases, front-end capacity usage is the size of the active backup. For other applications, the front-end capacity usage is the storage that is used for the protected primary data of the application.
A server must be running IBM Spectrum Protect Version 7.1.3 or later to report front-end capacity usage.
The total front-end capacity usage reported by each server depends on the individual clients that report information. Backup-archive clients and some IBM Spectrum Protect for Mail clients report front-end capacity usage. Whether other application clients report front-end capacity usage depends on the version of the client, and whether front-end capacity reporting is supported. Some vendor application clients might not report front-end capacity.
To view a list of the clients that reported front-end capacity usage, click the number of clients in the Reporting column. For clients that did not report usage, follow the approved methods of measuring front-end capacity that are described in your license information.
Restriction: If a client archives data and does not also back up that data, the capacity usage is not shown in the Operations Center. However, the size of the archived data must still be applied against your licensed entitlements. Refer to your license information for approved methods of measuring client data that is only archived. - Back-end page
- The Back-end page estimates the capacity usage that would be applied against the following bundles of IBM Spectrum Protect products:
- IBM Spectrum Protect Suite
- IBM Spectrum Protect Suite Entry
These software bundles offer simplified pricing that is based on the amount of managed data in primary storage pools. Because the pricing is based on the size of the stored data, deduplication and compression can reduce costs. Copy pool data and active-data pool data are copies of data in primary storage pools and are not counted in the measurement.
Total back-end usage includes backup data that is used for operational data recovery and archive data that is used for long-term data retention. Operational data is the current backup data that is in primary storage pools to satisfy typical day-to-day data recovery needs. Archive data is data that is in primary storage pools only to satisfy long-term archiving and data-retention requirements. Specifically, archive data refers to data on tape or in virtual tape libraries, or data that is held exclusively for long-term retention in retention sets.
To effectively estimate license compliance by using the back-end usage measurements, you must understand your current licensing terms. A special license option of the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite, which is called the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite - Archive Option, provides a reduced pricing tier for archive data. Depending on which of the following product bundles and licensing terms you have, you must estimate your license compliance differently.- If you have the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite product bundle without the archive option, or if you have the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite Entry product bundle, you must add the backup usage and archive usage measurements to determine your total back-end usage estimate. This total would be applied to normal pricing tiers.
- If you have the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite product bundle with the archive option, only the backup usage estimate would be applied to normal pricing tiers. The archive usage estimate would be applied to the reduced pricing tier for archive data.
A server must be running IBM Spectrum Protect Version 7.1.1 or later to report backup usage. A server must be running IBM Spectrum Protect Version 8.1.7 or later to report archive usage.