Peak Consumption (panel)

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

The Peak consumption panel (under Consumption by region) is shown only:

• For the IBM PVU or IBM VPC license types, and
• When IT Asset Management is in "sub-capacity mode", which means that the Enable frequent hardware scanning for IBM sub-capacity license calculations check box is set (go to the Inventory Settings page, and scroll down to the IBM reporting and archiving settings section).

You may expand or collapse this panel by clicking the arrow at the left of the heading.

When displayed, this panel has one mandatory section, and may also display additional sections depending on your data sources and settings.

Primary section

The mandatory section shows the three regions defined by IBM:

• North America and South America
• Europe and Africa
• Asia and Australia.

Each region displays the UTC date and time when its own peak consumption last occurred, and then shows the number of PVU points consumed in the peak for that region.

Tip: If the regional peak value was a steady state that persisted over time, the date shown in the last date when the peak value was calculated (before consumption values dropped lower). If the same peak value still applies in the most recent inventory import, the date shown is the date of the most recent license reconciliation calculation, which is likely to be either yesterday or today.

This same mandatory section of the panel includes a fourth row showing a similar peak value calculated for inventory devices that have not yet been assigned to one of the IBM regions. You can think of this line as an "error bar" on the other totals, as any points here must be assigned, and may cause variations in the peak consumption calculations for the affected region(s). If this Devices not assigned to any region row already shows a zero value, all is good; but a non-zero value means you should identify the inventory devices contributing to this unassigned total, and assign them as soon as possible to the correct region. (Use the Consumption tab, filtering by Region, to identify these devices.) From the next full inventory import and compliance calculation after you assign devices to a region, peaks are recalculated as though the devices had been in their newly-assigned regions for the entire period.

Container section

If this license is tracking consumption for software installed in containers (such as in Docker containers, or Kubernetes containers running in clusters reported by either the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent or the Lightweight Kubernetes Inventory Agent), then the peak calculated from the container consumption results returned by the IBM License Service appears in a Peak container consumption line. This line includes its own UTC date and time when the peak is calculated to have occurred. For more information, see Peak Container Consumption.

Additional section

Another section is displayed on demand, when there are relevant facts to display. The Current full capacity from other data sources section is only added when these additional conditions apply:

• There are additional inventory devices attached to the IBM PVU license that have non-approved sources providing their inventory records (that is, you are not using either FlexNet Inventory Agent or IBM tools as the inventory source for these devices)
• You have cleared the check box for Allow sub-capacity licensing for sources other than ... (located in the Rights on virtual machines and hosts section on the Use rights & rules tab of these license properties). This is the normal (and default) setting, as it is most unusual to have approval to use inventory sources other than IBM tools or IT Asset Management for sub-capacity (rather than full capacity) licensing.
  Tip: If, instead, you have selected this check box, best practice is to attach documentary evidence of your unusual permissions to the Documents tab of these license properties. In this case when the check box is selected, there is no separate additional section of full capacity results, and all sub-capacity results are rolled up into the mandatory section described above.

IBM PVU consumption calculations must combine:

• The sub-capacity results (in the primary section)
• The container peak consumption (if applicable), and
• Any remaining full capacity calculation results as well. For full capacity calculations from other inventory sources, history is not tracked. This consumption is always the result of the most recent import and compliance calculation, so that no dates/times are required here.

Total consumption

The sub-capacity values for each of the three regions, and for any unassigned inventory devices, are summed, and then added to any container peak consumption and any full capacity results for the regions as well. The simple sum is the Peak consumption calculated since date value (see Peak Consumption Since).