IBM PVU License Configuration

The 2019 R1 release of FlexNet Manager Suite introduced substantial changes to the handling of IBM PVU licenses for those with a revised license from IBM allowing you to use FlexNet Manager Suite in "high frequency" mode (referring to the high frequency inventory check for any hardware or virtualization changes) to replace ILMT as the source of truth for sub-capacity calculations of PVU consumption. This is also sometimes referred to as "PVU mode".

If you are not in this group, and either are not using IBM PVU licenses at all, or are using them but relying on results imported from ILMT, you are unaffected by these changes, and may skip the remainder of this topic.

To prepare for updated management processes for IBM PVU licenses:

1. Ignore all IBM PVU license consumption figures and compliance status results in the brief period between your system upgrade and the next overnight full inventory import and license consumption calculations.
   The methods of calculating and tracking peak PVU consumption were completely revised at the 2019 R1 release. In particular, PVU points consumption is now reevaluated for the entire reporting period as part of each nightly compliance calculation. Therefore, the change-over from old methods to new methods of calculation is not complete until the next overnight compliance calculation following your upgrade. Until then, compliance status is unknown and consumption figures are deliberately not updated and may well appear inconsistent. This is automatically corrected after the next full compliance calculation.

   Tip: The retrospective calculations for the reporting period rely on historical information about devices consuming from IBM PVU licenses. Automatic history tracking started immediately after you upgraded to release 2018 R2; or, if you skipped that release, it starts after you upgrade to 2024 R1.
2. Rework any business adapters that make use of the PeakConsumed value for IBM PVU licenses.
   Although it is uncommon, you may have prepared custom business adapters (used with the Business Importer) that modify the peak values for your IBM PVU licenses. If this is the case, those business adapters no longer function until you rework them to omit references to the PeakConsumed property. This property has now been removed from the data model for the Business Importer, since the old method of overwriting calculated peaks is no longer supported (nor permitted).
3. If you have not already done so, create a hierarchy of locations (a type of enterprise group) that can be used to link inventory devices correctly to their IBM PVU licenses. (Even if you have a good hierarchy of locations, at least three top-level locations need to be linked to one each of the mandatory IBM regions.) You may either:
   • Navigate to the system menu ( in the top right corner), select Data Inputs and choose the Business Data tab, and follow the online help for that page to prepare a standardized spreadsheet of locations for one-time import
   • Manually create each location in the web interface, as follows:
   1. Navigate to Enterprise > Locations.
   2. Open the online help from this page, and review both the introduction and the notes for IBM region.
   3. For more detailed information, see the topic Configuring Regions for IBM in FlexNet Manager Suite System Reference.
   4. Using that guidance, create the hierarchy of locations you desire, and assign to the appropriate IBM regions.
      This is faster if you make the regional assignments to locations that are as high as possible in your tree of corporate locations. Child locations by default inherit the region settings of their parent locations.
4. Ensure that every device consuming from an IBM PVU license is 'owned' by one of the locations that is now assigned to a region.
   Some approaches for this include:

   • Individual edits: On the Consumption tab of your IBM PVU license, Ctrl+click on each device name to open its properties in a new browser tab, select its location, and click Save. Repeat until all devices are assigned to their appropriate locations.
   • Multi-select update: If your enterprise has a strong naming convention for devices, you may be able to group a listing like the Active Inventory page by the device name, select multiple devices (of the same type) that all need the same location, and click Open to produce a page of shared properties. In the Ownership tab, select the common Location for all the selected devices, and Save the changed properties to update all the selected devices at once.
   • Coding: Derive a business adapter, perhaps like this:
   1. Wait until after your next overnight full compliance calculation (so that the new data model is in play).
   2. Open the license properties of your first IBM PVU license, selecting the Consumption tab.
   3. Use the column chooser to add (or remove) columns to get the appropriate properties displayed. In particular, display the Location and IBM region properties; and be sure to keep the Device name, of course.
   4. Use the download control (toward the left, just above the list) to save the consuming devices for this license (with the displayed columns) to an .xslx (Excel) spreadsheet.
   5. Complete the Location (and if you like, Region) columns in the spreadsheet.
   6. Build a custom business adapter to import the location assignments for each device. For details about business adapters and running the Business Importer, see Using FlexNet Business Adapters.
5. If necessary, merge license records to ensure correct assignments of inventory devices to a license.
   This is particularly important if you have multiple IBM PVU licenses for any given IBM product (within a region). The license reconciliation process for IBM PVU licenses (only) no longer takes account of whether there are unused points available on a license when choosing which license to link to a consuming device (for details about the remaining factors in the choice of license, see the topic Operation in High-Frequency Mode in FlexNet Manager Suite System Reference). Therefore, if you have multiple licenses (with matching Restrictions scope) for a single product, the reconciliation process now repeatedly chooses the same license for linking devices, possibly making that license over-utilized and leaving others under-consumed. In this case, then, it important to change your ratio of "licenses to products" from many-to-one (n:1) to one-to-one (1:1).

   On a separate point, there is no longer any need to replicate product licenses across the three mandatory IBM regions. A single license (per product) now correctly rolls up the consumption per IBM region, mapped through the ownership of devices by locations, and the assignment of locations to IBM regions. This means that you can simplify the future administration of IBM PVU licenses long term by having only one license per product (1:1) rather than three (or more – n:1).

   Tip: Provided that you have only one license per product (1:1) within each region (scoped by its Restrictions tab settings), it is not mandatory to merge your three regional licenses into a single all-region license. It remains the recommended best practice to merge down to only one all-region license per product, since it simplifies administration and reporting. However, if you already have a healthy structure of regional licenses (meaning one per product, within each region), the final result of PVU consumption and reporting is the same from a single all-region license or from three regional licenses. This means that, if your conditions are right, you might choose to treat license merging as a longer term project, not directly tied to your upgrade to FlexNet Manager Suite 2024 R1. Whether now or later, it's desirable to complete the merge of licenses for one individual product within one day, so that the overnight reconciliation process has a stable and correct set of licenses to work with.

   There is no convenient or automated way to merge license records, because the requirements here are unique to your enterprise. A manual process that may assist is:

   1. Start with the record of an application that is already linked to your IBM PVU licenses.
      The normal goal is to end up with a single license for each PVU-licensable application (or software bundle, which would use a single multi-product license). Therefore, if the Licenses tab in the application properties for this application shows only one IBM PVU license, move on to the next application, until all of your PVU-licensable applications have only one license each.
   2. From the Licenses tab in the application properties, choose one of the multiple licenses for this application to become the new 'merged' license, and Shift+Ctrl+click that license name to open its license properties in a new browser tab.
      Starting with an existing license reduces the configuration effort. Perhaps choose the license which has the most associated data, such as the most purchases linked to it, or perhaps a linked contract. (The number of linked inventory devices doesn't matter, as these will be moved automatically in the next full reconciliation.)
   3. In the Identification tab of the license properties, temporarily edit the license Name to help manage this target during the process. For example, append - Merged to the license name, and Save.
   4. Ensure that the properties of the merged license are set correctly:
      In the Use rights & rules tab, expand the section Rights on virtual machines and hosts and ensure that Use sub-capacity license calculations where available is selected (normally this should be the only selection in this section).

      Tip: Because you have previously been using FlexNet Manager Suite as the source of truth for PVU sub-capacity calculations, the Discovery & Inventory > Settings > IBM reporting and archiving settings > Enable frequent hardware scanning for IBM sub-capacity license calculations check box should currently be selected. If in doubt, validate and set.
   5. Check the Restrictions tab of the merged license. It's possible you had previously used restrictions to scope this license (say) to one of the IBM regions. In the new 'single license' model, the merged license is to apply worldwide; so remove any restrictions that work against that principle. In particular, remove any location-based restrictions.
   6. In a similar way, visit the Group assignment tab, and (most likely) remove group assignments so that this merged license plays worldwide.
   7. Typically, the Ownership tab of the merged license is also blank; but this requires assessment in the light of your corporate policies.
   8. Be sure to Save the updated properties of your merged license.
   9. Switch back to the application properties, and similarly open the properties of the next linked license in its own browser tab. We will transfer anything of importance from this license, and then delete the license record. Let's call this the 'condemned' license.
   10. In the Purchases tab of the condemned license, Shift+Ctrl+click the name of the first purchase record to open its properties in yet another browser tab. The purchase record provides the fastest way to transfer entitlements from one license to another:
       1. In the Licenses tab of the purchase properties, search for the amended name of your merged license, and add that license to the purchase.
       2. Then identify and select the row for the condemned license, and click Remove.
       3. Save the updated purchase properties. This purchase and its entitlements have now been transferred from the condemned license to the merged license.
       4. Close the browser tab for this set of purchase properties.
       5. Back in the Purchases tab of the condemned license, refresh the browser tab (the transferred purchase now disappears); and repeat this process until you have transferred all purchases from the condemned license to the merged license.
   11. In a similar way, in the Contracts tab of the condemned license, open the properties of any linked contract, and use the Licenses tab of the contract to switch its link from the condemned contract to the merged contract, saving and closing the amended contract properties.
   12. Review other tabs of the condemned license properties for other things to transfer to the merged license:
       • Are there any Notes in the Identification tab that should be copied across, for example as defense against a possible future audit?
       • Have you saved any important data in the Financial tab?
       • Check the Documents tab for anything linked there that should be transferred to the merged license.

       Be sure to Save the merged license again when anything has been added to it for safekeeping.
   13. Delete the condemned license:
       1. Copy the name of the condemned license from its license properties (we want to be certain of deleting the correct one!).
       2. Navigate to License Compliance > All Licenses, paste the name of the condemned license into the search field and type Enter. This should return exactly the one license record in the list area. (If not, investigate and identify which is your condemned license.)
       3. Click the check box at the left of this record, click Delete, and confirm the deletion.
   14. Switch back to the browser tab displaying the Licenses tab of the application properties, and refresh so that the just-deleted license disappears from this page, and the merged license is visible. If there are still multiple licenses attached to the application, choose the next old license to condemn, and loop back and repeat.
   15. Once this application has just a single IBM PVU - Merged license, you can pause for the overnight reconciliation, and tomorrow inspect the peak consumption results on the Compliance tab of that license.
   16. If there are other applications licensed with multiple IBM PVU licenses, choose a day when you will loop back and work through the license merging for the next application...

You may find that, after all your rework, there is some slight correction in overall points consumed after your next full inventory import and license compliance calculation. One unusual combination that may cause a downward correction when upgrading from an earlier release to 2019 R1 (or later) is as follows:

• You have devices which you have marked as Ignored
• Nevertheless, you have allocated entitlements from an IBM PVU license to those ignored devices
• The allocation should force license consumption for normal devices (either because you chose a Permanent allocation on the Consumption tab of the license, or because you set Allocations consume license entitlements on the Use rights & rules tab of the relevant license).

In previous releases, the forced consumption from the allocation was applied even to ignored devices. From release 2019 R1, IBM PVU licenses correctly ignore the device for this method of consumption, as well as for all others. As a result, overall consumption may correctly decrease by the number of points previously consumed by the ignored devices.