IBM RU License Consumption Report

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

The IBM RU License Consumption report is an audit report that displays the consumption details of software covered by RU licenses and the license entitlements consumed against those licenses for a given reporting period.

Generating the report

  1. Go to the IBM RU License Consumption page (Reporting > IBM Reports > IBM RU License Consumption).
  2. If necessary, use the two date pickers labeled Reporting period (in the top left corner) to adjust the reporting period.
  3. The report controls include a search field labeled Licenses, which for audit reporting defaults to All IBM RU non Cloud Pak licenses. For special purposes, to narrow your report to one or several candidate licenses:
    1. Click the edit icon in the field to open a search panel.
    2. Type all or part of a license name in the License search field, and click Search. Results display in the list at the bottom of the panel (across multiple pages, if your search returned a large number of licenses).
    3. Select the check box to the left of the license (or licenses) to include in the report. Your current selection(s) are displayed in the Selected license box, and also in the Licenses text box.
    4. Close the search panel. for example by again clicking the Licenses field.
  4. Click Run report.

Reading the report

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).

To itemize consumption, this report combines properties of:
  • Application
  • Container cluster
  • License
  • Region.

To clarify the report, the properties are grouped under headers that identify their underlying database object. Similarly, this list of properties is grouped first by the database object (alphabetically ordered), and then the related properties (also sorted alphabetically).

Table 1.
Column name Description
Application properties
Application name
The application's name, which may be:
  • Set by the Application Recognition Library
  • Derived from the evidence values for Product, Version, and Edition properties
  • Edited manually (for records created locally).
Edition

The edition of an application. These editions, for example, Lite or Pro, describe different levels or groupings of functionality.

Primary

Describes whether this product is primary for this license. The default value of this field is Yes for a single-product license. In case of licensing product bundles, you can select one or more primary product(s) for this license. When the application displays No in this column, the installation does not consume any points, as its licensing is covered by the primary product(s) on the same license.

Container cluster
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).
Cluster peak consumption The highest level of consumption for this cluster within the reporting period that contributed towards the consumption for the license.
License properties
License consumption
The total number of points consumed for this IBM VPC license, which is the sum of:
  • The peak consumption for each of the three IBM regions, each occurring on its independent date.
  • A quasi-peak consumption for inventory devices in an Unknown region. (Before archiving this report, identify and fix all these devices, assigning their ownership to locations linked to one of the three mandatory IBM regions.)
  • The current consumption figures for all devices linked to the license but requiring full capacity calculations.
License name
The license name may be:
  • Copied from the first-linked software product
  • Derived from the License Name field of the SKU in the first-linked purchase (or if there is no SKU, from the purchase Description field)
  • Created manually.
License publisher

The name of the software publisher (responsible for its development and distribution), as shown in the license properties.

License version

The version assigned to the license. This may be tracking versions of a linked application, or may an independent value.

Region properties
Region consumption

The peak consumption (the highest number of points consumed on an individual day) for the IBM region identified in this row, being the region to which consumption by the host server contributes.

Region name
Shows, for each device, the region in which its license points are included (or, if the device is not yet assigned to a region, Unknown region is displayed, and this should be corrected as soon as practical). This is one of the three regions of the world that IBM makes mandatory for reporting points consumption on IBM sub-capacity licenses.
Tip: In any list of inventory devices, a virtual machine shows the IBM region linked to its host server. This is because an IBM sub-capacity license licenses the host, and therefore the total consumption for the host is rolled up into the IBM region that is linked to the host (through its owning location). This total consumption includes both software installed on the host and/or on any guest VMs running on that host. (In contrast, if the host for the VM is unknown, the VM displays its own properties, so that in this case, the location and its mapped IBM region are those from the orphan VM.)
Values may be:
  • North America and South America
  • Europe and Africa
  • Asia and Australia
  • Unknown region (either when there is no owning location, or when the owning location has not be assigned to an IBM region).
Region peak consumption time
The last date (within your chosen reporting period) when the peak value for the named region occurred. If the system is widely stable, the peak value may be sustained for a long time, so that this value may well be the date of your last license reconciliation (possibly today or yesterday). If the date is earlier than that, the current consumption is lower than the peak for that region.
Tip: To synchronize reporting for the three regions worldwide, dates are UTC (that is, the date rolls over at midnight UTC).

Downloading the archive of IBM license consumption reports

You can download the reports of IBM Cloud Pak license consumption, IBM PVU license consumption, IBM VPC license consumption, IBM MVS license consumption, IBM RU license consumption and the unlicensed installations as a digitally-signed package, which can be used as a trusted source for audit. The data contained in the package can be validated for authenticity. To download the package, select the reporting period, and click the Download the IBM audit report link. The downloaded package contains the following data :
  • IBM Cloud Pak license consumption report
  • IBM PVU license consumption report
  • IBM VPC license consumption report
  • IBM MVS license consumption report
  • IBM RU license consumption report
  • IBM Unlicensed Installations report
  • Report summary
    Note: The report summary contains the generation date, user account that generated the report, period of the report, and statistics for the out-of-date inventory devices.
  • Checksums
  • Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) file
  • RSA signature file

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

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