IBM Container Licensing
- It is completely unrelated to any inventory collection or license consumption calculations by IT Asset Management.
- To preserve the original information from the IBM License Service, no attempt is made to "normalize" information to comply with Flexera standards. For example, product names in this report may not align with names used in the Application Recognition Library.
- If you have software included in this report that you have also separately licensed elsewhere (not in a Kubernetes environment), the Compliance status of those other licenses no longer reflects your total exposure. You need to combine the consumption reported by the IBM License Service (shown in this report) with the consumption recorded for your other license(s) for the same product, and compare the resulting sum to the entitlements purchased.
- Two values (only) in this listing, Product metric and Product peak metric date, are not directly extracted from IBM License Service, but instead are calculated by IT Asset Management to summarize data collected daily from IBM License Service. For details, see the entries in the table below.
Generating the report
- Go to the IBM Container Licensing page.
- If necessary, use the two date pickers labeled Reporting period (in the top left corner) to adjust the reporting period. The maximum reporting period for this report is fixed at 180 days (and does not respond to any other settings within IT Asset Management).
- Click Run report.
Reading the report
- If the product is installed/used within more than one Kubernetes cluster,
there are individual rows for the same product within each of those
clusters. Each of these rows allow you to see the same total
consumption for the product across all clusters (Product
metric) on the Product peak metric
date, as well as the individual Cluster
metric contribution by each of the clusters on the same date
— the date within your reporting period when the sum of all cluster
contributions first reached its maximum/peak value. For example, the values
may look like this (column names shortened to fit):
Here the same product was running on two clusters on January 6, the date when the sum of the cluster consumption figures first peaked at 130 points, of which 100 were contributed by Cluster A and 30 by Cluster B.Product name Product metric Peak metric date Cluster name Cluster metric Product 1 130 2021/01/06 Cluster A 100 Product 1 130 2021/01/06 Cluster B 30 Tip: It is possible that either cluster had a higher individual consumption on some other date, but this is not relevant and not shown. Only the sum of consumption across clusters is relevant. - If the product is actually a software bundle (such as an IBM Cloud Pak),
there are individual rows showing the product with each of its member
"bundled products". Once again, each row shows the total consumption for the
parent product (bundle) on the Product peak metric
date, as well as the individual member product's
contribution to that total. For example (column names shortened to
fit):
Product name Product metric Peak metric date B/product name Metric converted Product 1 130 2021/01/06 Bundle member X 80 Product 1 130 2021/01/06 Bundle member Y 50 - If the product is both a software bundle/Cloud Pak and
installed/used within more than one Kubernetes cluster, there are individual
rows for the same product with each of its bundled member products,
and for each of those pairings across each cluster. As before,
the Product fields show the same duplicated top-level
summary in each row; and in this case, the 'duplicated' rows show the
consumption for each member product on each cluster. Omitting the product
total and peak date columns, our example becomes:
Here, Product 1 still has a total consumption of 130 points on January 6, of which 100 points are in Cluster A and 30 points in Cluster B. Within Cluster A, the bundled product X contributes 60 points, and the bundled product Y contributes 40 points (for Cluster A's total of 100), and so on.Product name ... Cluster name Cluster metric B/product name Metric converted Product 1 Cluster A 100 Bundle member X 60 Product 1 Cluster B 30 Bundle member X 20 Product 1 Cluster A 100 Bundle member Y 40 Product 1 Cluster B 30 Bundle member Y 10
In short, for all combinations of an individual product through a software bundle, running on a single cluster or multiple clusters, this report shows you, on any individual line, the total consumption (Product metric) for the product along with the lowest-level combination of a member bundled product (where applicable) on an individual cluster (where applicable). All consumption figures in the row for a product are for the same Product peak metric date, when the total consumption for the product first reached its maximum value in this reporting period.
The following columns are available. By default, all available columns are displayed in the report (although for special purposes, you may move any columns that you do not want included into the column chooser).
- Product (which is either an individually-licensed product, or a software bundle such as an IBM Cloud Pak)
- Cluster (only Kubernetes clusters are included in this report)
- Bundled product (an individual member product that is included in an IBM Cloud Pak/software bundle).
To clarify the report, the properties are grouped under headers that identify their underlying object. Similarly, this list of properties is grouped first by the object (alphabetically ordered), and then the related properties (also sorted alphabetically).
| Column name | Description |
|---|---|
| Bundled product properties | |
| Bundled product ID |
IBM's unique identifier for this individual product that is a member of a software bundle. (Blank if the product shown in Product name for this row is not a software bundle.) |
| Bundled product name |
The name that IBM reports for this individual product within the software bundle. (Blank if the product shown in Product name for this row is not a software bundle.) |
| Metric converted quantity | The measure reported by IBM License Service as the consumption points for this individual product within the software bundle. Typically this is the arithmetic result of multiplying the Metric measured quantity by the Metric conversion ratio. (Blank if the individual product shown in Product name for this row is not a software bundle.) |
| Metric conversion |
The ratio that IBM applies to the raw metric count (see Metric measured quantity) to calculate the final liability for licensing this product within its software bundle. (Blank if the individual product shown in Product name for this row is not a software bundle.) |
| Metric measured quantity |
The raw count of the chosen metric (see Metric name) assessed by the IBM License Service monitoring. This is the daily consumption for this individual member of the software bundle on the Product peak metric date recorded for the overall bundle (typically, an IBM Cloud Pak). (Blank if the individual product shown in Product name for this row is not a software bundle.) |
| Cluster properties | |
| Cluster ID |
A unique identifier for the Kubernetes cluster. Use this to separate any clusters with overlapping names. |
| Cluster metric |
The total consumption for this product (see Product name) across all nodes in the identified cluster, reported by IBM License Service as of the Product peak metric date. (Contrast with Product metric.) |
| Cluster name |
The name given to the Kubernetes cluster of nodes (working computers, either physical or virtual). This name is not guaranteed to be unique (in facts, tends to repeat default values, such as mk). Check the Cluster ID to validate whether duplicate cluster names are actually referring to one cluster, or to multiples. |
| Product properties | |
| Metric name |
The measure used for calculating consumption for this product.
The names may indicate the type of licensing expected for the
current product:
|
| Product ID |
A unique identifier for either:
|
| Product metric |
The peak number of points (of the named metric) for the current
product across all nodes in all clusters.
Note: This
value is calculated by IT Asset Management from the
consumption values for each cluster (Cluster
metric) imported daily from the IBM License
Service. This is the highest sum across all clusters
in the chosen reporting period (the maximum period being the
last 180 days), and first occurred on the Product
peak metric date.
Tip: For
standalone (non-bundle) products, when the Metric
name is
PROCESSOR_VALUE_UNIT, the
IBM License Service has applied its own multiplier (similar
to a Metric conversion) to the raw
inventory information. Typically this multiplier is 70 PVU
points for each vCPU. For more information about IBM
calculations, see https://www.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/containerlicenses.html.
|
| Product name |
The name recorded in the IBM License Service for the 'master'
product in this row. (This may, or may not, match any product
names listed in the Application Recognition Library, which may make it
more difficult to align these results with the same product
licensed separately in other environments.)
Tip: This product is either an individual product (in which case
all the bundled product columns are blank), or a software
bundle (such as an IBM Cloud Pak) that contains a number of
member "bundled products". This Product
name (along with its associated values,
especially its Product metric and
Product peak metric date which
remain consistent) may be repeated multiple times in the
listing, as explained above (see Reading the report).
|
| Product peak metric date |
The date when the highest (peak) value first occurred for total
consumption across all clusters of the measure applied to
this product (see Product metric).
Note: Determined by IT Asset Management, this is the
date within your chosen reporting period (maximum 180 days)
when the sum of the Cluster
metric values imported from IBM License
Service for all clusters had its highest value. The date of
this maximum sum may be independent of the peak
consumption dates within each individual Kubernetes
cluster.
|
IT Asset Management (Cloud)
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