License Management in IBM License Metric Tool

The IBM® PowerAI Vision product is licensed per Virtual Server ("Learn about software licensing - Virtual Server"). When the product is installed, a software license metric (SLM) tag file is created to track usage with the IBM License Metric Tool.

The license metric tag is an XML file, with extension .slmtag. The IBM License Metric Tool discovers the license metric tag file and provides license consumption reports that, compared with license entitlements, allow IBM to verify license compliance. The tag file is human-readable and can therefore be interpreted by individuals for audit purposes.

The license metric tag file has a standard format and consists of two parts:
Header information
Contains:
SchemaVersion
Identifies the schema version of the license metric tag file.
SoftwareIdentity
Identifies the software identity instance that provides license metric data. Contains:
  • Name

    Name of the software identity - IBM PowerAI Vision Training and Inference or IBM PowerAI Vision Inference for Servers

  • PersistentId
    Unique identifier of the software identity. For IBM PowerAI Vision 1.1.4, the assigned PersistentId is:
    • IBM PowerAI Vision Training and Inference - ebb8d2e1bd62488c8c196f568857ae38
    • IBM PowerAI Vision Inference for Servers - 297aaa94baa441e0ad91a609b24083b7
  • InstanceId

    Identifies the instance of the software identity that provides metrics by the path of the software for which SLMTag is generated - /opt/powerai-vision.

Metrics information
IBM PowerAI Vision 1.1.4 is licensed per Virtual Server, so the values are:
  • Type - VIRTUAL_SERVER
  • Period - StartTime is the time of install/deploy, EndTime is set to date '9999-12-31' so that the IBM License Metric Tool will understand that it as a perpetual license.