Installing IBM Cloud Private for metering WebSphere

By installing IBM Cloud® Private, you can configure your on-premises or cloud-based WebSphere® Application Server to register and report usage metrics to the IBM Cloud Private metering service.

Stabilized feature: The usage metering feature is stabilized. It is currently used with WebSphere Automation and was previously used with the now removed metering service in IBM Cloud Private. For general performance and metering needs, consider using WebSphere Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI).

Before you begin

Ensure that the system or VM that you are installing IBM Cloud Private on has enough memory and CPUs allocated. For metering, the system must have at least 8 CPU and 16 GB memory. For more information, see Hardware requirements and recommendations.

Note: Users of WebSphere Application Server are entitled to use an installation of IBM Cloud Private Foundation 3.1 or later for metering. The following steps are for a minimal installation of IBM Cloud Private that supports metering. IBM Cloud Private supports many other configurations; which can also be used for metering WebSphere Application Server.

About this task

From a single metering service on IBM Cloud Private, you can track WebSphere Application Server, as well as other IBM products, that are hosted on-premises, in IBM Cloud, or in other cloud environments. When a server is registered with a metering service instance, that server connects to the service on IBM Cloud Private and periodically reports usage metrics. The following information is available on the IBM Cloud Private metering service dashboard:

Number of active servers
Host location of each server
Product edition and version of each server
Product metrics which indicate how busy each server is
The virtual processor cores available to each server

Procedure

Download the platform-appropriate IBM Cloud Private Foundation installation image and readme.html file from Passport Advantage.
Follow the instructions for installing IBM Cloud Private in the readme.html file, with the following modifications:
- Before the deployment step, edit the management_services section of the config.yaml file to disable the following services:
```
management_services: 
  custom-metrics-adapter: disabled 
  image-security-enforcement: disabled 
  istio: disabled 
  logging: disabled 
  monitoring: disabled 
  storage-glusterfs: disabled 
  vulnerability-advisor: disabled
```
Save the IBM Cloud Private certificate to configure your server keystore file.
- Navigate to the IBM Cloud Private dashboard. When it asks for you to accept the self signed certificate, you can view the certificate and use browser options to save it.
Configure an API key for the metering service.
You can configure one or more API keys for different namespaces and allow namespace access to different IBM Cloud Private users. This example shows configuring the API key to the default namespace.

To create an API that is recognized by the metering service in IBM Cloud Private, follow these steps. For more information about the IBM Cloud Private metering service, see the official documentation.
These steps create:
- A service ID bound to a namespace
- An API key bound to a service ID
- A service policy to grant access to the 'metering-service' service
Note: Multiple namespaces can have access to the metering-service. Organize access to the metering-service data by using namespaces, API keys, and service IDs.
If you do not have the IBM Cloud Private CLI, get it now and prepare it for use on your local machine.
- Download the OS appropriate cloudctl CLI from IBM Cloud Private welcome page.
```
mv cloudctl-versionspecific cloudctl
chmod +777 cloudctl 
mv cloudctl /usr/local/bin
```
Log in to the IBM Cloud Private endpoint by using the default namespace. Enter the IBM Cloud Private URL, https://x.x.x.x:8443/, user name, and password when prompted.
```
cloudctl login --skip-ssl-validation
```
Optionally, change to a different namespace:
```
cloudctl target -n namespace
```
```
cloudctl iam service-id-create my-serviceid-for-metering -d "Metering serviceid description"
cloudctl iam service-api-key-create my-apikey my-serviceid-for-metering
cloudctl iam service-policy-create my-serviceid-for-metering -r Operator --service-name metering-service
```
To see the API key and URL for the metering service just created:
- Navigate to Platform > Metering.
- Click the menu with the three vertical dots and choose Manage API keys.
Make note of the following three items required to configure your WebSphere Application Server instances:
1. metering service API key
2. metering service URL
3. metering service certificate file

Results

IBM Cloud Private is available with the metering service that is enabled for use with your WebSphere Application Server instances. To view registered servers in the IBM Cloud Private metering service, go to Platform > Metering, and select your service instance. Your registered servers are listed under your namespaces.