How to get started on cloud

These days, a typical IT infrastructure is like a sunny day in England. One minute, there’s not a cloud in sight; the next, there are dozens. And unless you’re prepared to adjust for this situation, you can quickly start having a bad day.

So let’s talk about how you can prepare.

How do I get started?

Let’s say you’re a business starting to explore the opportunities for running on a public cloud. Realistically, you’re not going to go all in on day one, but you do have a project or two that you’d like to have on the cloud. You probably have a cloud in mind, and you certainly have developers who are ready to get started.

Before you dive in, you’ll want to be sure that anything you do on the cloud can exchange data with your other applications. (A great use for IBM MQ!)

This has a number of benefits. Not only are you ensuring that your data transfer will remain largely unaffected, but you’ll also be setting yourself up for future success. Your business can continue to run normally as you move more projects into the cloud.

What about licensing?

Many people also want to know about licensing. They’re often used to running systems like IBM MQ on-premise, and they track deployments through systems—like the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT)—which were designed for on-premise deployment. In those cases, running on a public cloud creates a question.

We’d recommend that you start by checking out your options for moving your current license to the cloud. IBM offers a BYOSL (Bring Your Own Software License) policy that allows you to use your existing IBM license on a public cloud. This way, you can use products you’re already familiar with as you explore a new endeavor.

How does it work for IBM?

With IBM products, you can use the same Processor Value Units (PVUs) that you used for your on-premise deployments when you’re running on a public cloud.

As a general rule, you’ll need 70 PVUs of entitlement for each vCPU (virtual Central Processing Unit) your IBM deployment uses in a public cloud. For example, if you determine that you’ll need to run five cores of MQ, you’ll need 350 PVUs of entitlement. Or, if you need 10 cores of MQ Advanced, you’ll need 700 PVUs of entitlement. You get the picture.

What are IBM’s licensing requirements?

Keeping with the tradition of most other IBM software, there isn’t a license key. However, IBM does require that you can share records to show your deployment and verify that you’re compliant with your entitlement.

Most public clouds have good reporting mechanisms, and if you choose to use a cloud other than IBM’s, you can show us your cloud reports as proof of deployment. Of course, our preference is for customers to use ILMT to ensure consistent reporting, but it isn’t mandatory. As long as you bring your license to the cloud, you’ll be set!

If you’d like to see an example of deploying IBM MQ on a public cloud, check out this blog post or this Quick Start guide for IBM MQ on AWS.

This content was adapted from “Licence to Thrill” on Leifdavidsen’s Blog.