Licensing Checklist when upgrading an IBM Product or server

*IBM License Tip* Before upgrading that IBM product have you considered the full license impact? see checklist below

When upgrading an IBM product there are a number of things to consider from a license perspective.?Below is a checklist to you might find helpful.

What products are being upgraded

• Are there more than one IBM products making up the service?
• Are there technical dependencies between the products? For example specific or minimum versions of supporting programs e.g. database.

Is S&S still in place

• Is S&S still in place for the product(s) I'm upgrading?

Do I have sufficient licenses

• Do you have enough licenses before you start??
• Do I need to make a request for additional licenses?

How long will the upgrade take (parallel running )

• Will it take longer that the default 90 days allowed by IBM?
• How confident am I that the upgrade will be done on time?
• Do you need to formally request a longer exemption from your IBM account manager
• Do I need to consider buying a Fixed Term License?

Will I need non-production licenses

• Does the product have a non-production license option?
• Will I need extra QA or staging licenses for the project?

Additional licensing rules for upgraded version

• Have the licensing rules change significantly between versions?
• Have we checked the License Information documents for current and new version to understand differences?
• In particular constraints around virtualisation.

Change in supporting programs (bundles) for new version

• What are the supporting program (bundled products) changes?
• Do the changes require additional licenses to be purchased with upgrade?

Impact of physical to virtual

• Are we moving the products from physical servers to virtual as part of upgrade?
• Have we planned for the tasks to avail of sub-capacity licensing?
• Do we have sufficient licenses for new configuration?

Impact of hardware upgrade

• Have we calculated the PVU count for any hardware upgrade?
• Are there any changes to DR that might impact licensing, in particualr Hot/warm/cold standby?

Changes to BigFix (scanning)

• Are we correctly scanning the new environments (prod and non-prod)?
• Do we need to exclude any servers from scans?

Changes to ILMT (license reporting)

• have we verified the ILMT Audit Snapshot is accurate before we start the project
• have we updated the configuration of ILMT to report new product deployment?
• Have we made exclusions with details notes to remove the servers being replaced with the upgrade?
• Are the high water marks for PVU licensing correct, no "Ghost Servers" inflating demand ?
• have we verified the ILMT Audit Snapshot is accurate and as expected after the upgrade is complete and before we create our quarterly sub-capacity ILMT snapshot report.

Audit readiness after upgrade

• Have we calculated the new license position?
• Are we ready for an audit for the new products but also the entire environment?

Conclusion

Any upgrade to IBM products is going to have a significant license impact. If you review and plan the impact and costs will not be a surprise.

Have you any additional checks to add to our list?

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