Changes to ILMT have just made IBM sub-capacity licensing more complex
Piaras MacDonnell - IBM Licensing Expert
I can help you significantly reduce your IBM License Costs
*IBM License Tip* you now need to do a FULL upgrade of ILMT to remain compliantfor IBM sub capacity licensing.
The announcement from IBM that manual updates of the software catalogue in ILMT are not longer supported might have slipped past you.
The implications for IBM sub-capacity licensing of not being able to do manual updates of the software catalogue will soon become apparent.
ILMT Previously
IBM sub capacity licensing allows you to license some, not all of the processors in a server for a particular product. This is known as sub-capacity licensing. There are some rules, one of which is to run a monitoring tool
Most organization upgraded their version of ILMT every 12-18 months. They manually updated their software catalogue and PVU tables every 3 months. This was enough to keep them license compliant.
Changes to ILMT
With the release of ILMT update 9.2.20.0 the ability to manual upload of the software catalog to License Metric Tool was removed.
领英推è
You are now required to do a full upgrade to the latest release of ILMT to ensure your software catalog is correct.
Implications for clients
To remain compliant for sub-capacity licensing you will need to do a full upgrade of ILMT every quarter rather than the significantly less complex task of manually update the software catalogue. Additional tasks will include:
- Opening a Change Request for a production system
- Database Backup
- System administrator
to carry out upgrade - Test that upgrade was successful
Additional skills and time will also be required. It will be especially complex if you are upgrading from older versions of ILMT as you will require incremental upgrades to get to the latest version.
Conclusion
Updating ILMT every quarter will ensure your ILMT instance is accurately reporting license consumption it is going to be more work for the ILMT administrator and SAM team.
The first time you upgrade will require a project not only to do the upgrade but to develop the run books and train resources
Expert #BigFix #ILMT - Conseil, intégration et formation
1 å¹´Hi ILMT lovers! I just upgrade to latest version of ILMT 9.2.34.0 using BigFix appropriate task. In the past, after updating ILMT server and running an import, an action was automatically launched to push the new ILMT Software Catalog to all BigFix Clients. But today I didn't see this action after running the import, so I was wondering if anything has changed in ILMT based on BigFix? Is it normal or should I open a ticket? Thanks for your help! EDIT : I found the answer. The software catalog on clients is now updated by task "Install or Upgrade Scanner"
I can help you significantly reduce your IBM License Costs
2 å¹´You will also need to be more vigilant for security updates. Especially after each release.
Is your cloud bill too high? Wanna know why?
2 å¹´Most expensive "free" tool on the planet. Luckily, you can ditch it and use couple of others.
Bit of a pain when the SAM team is also the team that maintains ILMT, but with containerisation gaining momentum along with the traditional sub-cap licensing, more frequent updates to ILMT/BigFix and more frequent maintenance of it was always going to be a factor. My IBM reps haven't told us this yet, so a big thank you Piaras for your post. We only use ILMT because we have to (like many, I guess) and because there is no integration into our main SAM system, it's always been the source of frustrating overhead.
License compliance, Vendor Management, Negotiation, Budgeting & forecasting, Cost Optimisation
2 å¹´I think its more about getting updates to bundling and pvu table rather than changing in licensing terms for sub capacity