Support for IBM Cloud Paks with new VPC license

FlexNet Manager Suite version 2020 R2

IBM encourages customers to license IBM Cloud Paks with a new form of sub-capacity licensing that counts virtual processor cores assigned to run the software. This release of FlexNet Manager Suite includes a new IBM VPC license type for non-containerized infrastructure that simplifies this form of licensing, as well as licensing traditional bundles or individual products. (Support for containers is planned for a forthcoming release.)

As IBM Cloud Paks may be bundles with multiple primary products, the VPC license Consumption tab is specialized to allow the consumption tree(s) to start from the product(s) attached to the license, below which you can identify the virtual host, any applicable resource pools, and the virtual machines running the software. Alternatively, for those VPC licenses covering only a single primary product, the consumption tree(s) are more familiar, starting with the virtual host(s) where the licensed software is running on a guest VM.

Tip: In Cloud Pak bundles, the licensing of primary products also covers any bundled supplementary products, so these supplementary cannot be separately licensed.

For software running on an instance provided by an eligible cloud service provider, IBM's eligible public cloud BYOSL policy now recommends counting assigned vCPUs (or threads), and using these for both IBM PVU and VPC licenses instead of the core count. For any inventory device record where the Hosted in property has been set to a cloud service provider (and not, of course, to On-premises), both these IBM license types automatically take account of assigned vCPUs. Similarly, if the software runs on a stand-alone (non-virtualized) server, the licenses automatically take account of processor cores.

A VPC license doesn't have a points table as such (the way that a PVU license assigns points based on the processor type); but each licensed product in an IBM Cloud Pak bundle has an individual ratio of the number of VPCs permitted for each license entitlement. For example, if a particular product in the bundle has a 2:1 ratio, two VPCs can be used to run that product for every individual license entitlement. If another product in the same bundle has a 1:1 ratio, then that same single license entitlement also authorizes one core (VPC) to be assigned to run the second product.

In general, the IBM VPC license is for managing sub-capacity consumption in a way very similar to the IBM PVU license, and in fact all the same PVU sub-capacity rules apply to licensing IBM Cloud Paks. For example, the VPC license tracks peak consumption within the same three mandatory IBM regions, and for the same reporting period, as do PVU licenses. Another familiar requirement, if you have been granted a license variation to use FlexNet Manager Suite to track sub-capacity consumption of PVU license, is that you must archive your sub-capacity consumption reports for two years. This release includes two additional reports that can be saved/archived in the same cycle as your equivalent PVU reports:

• IBM Cloud Pak License Consumption records the region-based peak sub-capacity license consumption for a given reporting period
• IBM Cloud Pak License Current Consumption shows the region-based consumption for all Cloud Pak licenses as of the most recent license compliance calculation (typically overnight last night).

You can jump directly to either report from the Consumption tab on an IBM VPC license's property sheet, and they are of course also accessible through the Reports menus.