Using automatic decommissioning in ILMT to reduce IBM license demand especially in cloud environments
Piaras MacDonnell - IBM Licensing Expert
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*IBM License Tip* Use automatic decommissioning in ILMT to reduce IBM license demand especially in cloud environments
There are many reasons why a decommissioned server is not removed from BigFix Inventory. It might be policy, the environment may be changing too fast (cloud instances) or you are in the middle of a digital transformation. Whatever the reason your IBM licensing requirements are inflated and you will need to do something to correct the situation.
The recommended approach is to update BigFix and then manually correct your ILMT reports, with an appropriate comment. This can be time consuming and is frequently overlooked. It is also a compliance risk as the license high water mark appears to be much higher than it actually is.
An alternative is to enable automatic decommissioning in ILMT.
You start by defining the policy for automatic decommissioning. The default is 90 days but you might want to reduce this if there are frequent decommissions to 30 days or even lower. Link to IBM user guide below.
Now when an ILMT agent does not report in for the period specified it will be automatically marked as decommissioned and removed from the ILMT reports.
You should still reviewed all changes, including automatic decommissions, each quarter to verify they are correct.
The impact can be significant, particularly where there is a lot of change in the VMs running IBM products.
Instructions on how to configure automatic decommissioning
Below is a link to the official instructions to configure automatic decommissioning.
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