The use of IBM License Metric Tool is recommended for Full Capacity and is mandatory for use with sub-capacity licensing.

February 2023: With the release of IBM Passport Advantage Agreement v11, IBM removed exceptions for sub-capacity reporting requirements.

Clients that, prior to May 1st, 2023, were doing manual reporting because of the exceptions outlined in IBM Passport Advantage Agreement v10 have been granted manually reporting of sub-capacity deployments until January 1, 2024, if they were still compliant with the related requirements.

Starting January 1, 2024 all prior exceptions are no longer applicable.

For Full Capacity and for manual reporting under the former IBM Passport Advantage Agreement v10 exceptions, customers must manually manage, track, and prepare a Manual Calculation of Virtual Capacity worksheet for each server. For more details about the requirements for this worksheet, go to Virtualization Capacity License Counting Rules.

Customers must maintain documentation for at least two years to demonstrate ongoing compliance with these Sub-Capacity Licensing terms.

For information about supported platforms and hardware requirements for use of IBM License Metric Tool administrative server and its agents, search the IBM License Metric Tool documentation.

For listings of current technologies supported by IBM License Metric Tool, consult the list of technologies supported by License Metric Tool.

For details of Sub-capacity licensing requirements, including requirements for maintaining documentation, see the Passport Advantage Virtualization Capacity (Sub-capacity) Licensing and the Virtualization Capacity License Counting Rules.

BigFix Inventory is now an HCL product and the latest BigFix Inventory product release level delivered by IBM is BigFix Inventory 9.2.15.

IBM and HCL have established a collaboration agreement aimed to continue to have BigFix Inventory accepted as an alternate solution to IBM License Metric Tool for IBM Virtualization Capacity reporting.

Important: HCL BigFix Inventory is not accepted by IBM to report inventory and license usage for software running on Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes.

Please refer to BigFix Inventory and HCL FAQ for the accepted and IBM validated BigFix Inventory versions/releases/updates and additional FAQs.

For BigFix Inventory product information, visit BigFix Inventory on the HCL Site.

IBM and Flexera have established an agreement to certify Flexera One IT Asset Management as an alternate solution to IBM License Metric Tool for IBM Virtualization Capacity reporting. In addition, through integrations with IBM License Services, but not stand-alone, Flexera One IT Asset Management is accepted by IBM to report inventory and license usage for software running on Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes.

IBM Software customers can choose to use the IBM SaaS offering, Flexera One with IBM Observability IT Asset Management (or the companion Flexera One Select with IT Observability), the Flexera SaaS offering, Flexera One IT Asset Management (or companion Flexera One Select IT Asset Management).

Other Flexera products are not certified.

IBM recognizes Flexera FlexNet Manager and it s related IBM resell branded Flexera One with IBM Observability on-prem as alternative metering tools. However, to use Flexera FlexNet Manager solutions as an alternative to the approved metering tools the following conditions must be met:

1. Additional terms must be signed. These terms take the form of a Passport Advantage Addendum.  The Addendum is available from IBM upon request; and
2. IBM’s written approval must be obtained.

For any environment not supported by Flexera One IT Asset Management, IBM Software customers will need to set up a dedicated ILMT instance connected to the environment or choose full capacity counting (not leveraging sub capacity savings) for this environment.

The following table provides a summarized view of the supported operating systems and virtualized environments support by Flexera One IT Asset Management.