Viewing and tracking license usage

License Service collects and measures the license usage of your product at the cluster level. You can retrieve this data upon request for monitoring and compliance. You can also retrieve an audit snapshot of the data that is audit evidence.

About License Service

License Service is required for monitoring and measuring license usage of the IBM Cloud Paks® and IBM® stand-alone containerized software in accord with the pricing rule for containerized environments. Manual license measurements are not allowed.

License Service

• Collects and measures the license usage of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric at the cluster level.
• Collects and measures the license usage of IBM Cloud Paks and their bundled products that are enabled for reporting and licensed with the Managed Virtual Server (MVS) license metric.
• Collects and measures the license usage of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) and Processor Value Unit (PVU) metrics at the cluster level of IBM® stand-alone containerized software that is deployed on a cluster and is enabled for reporting.
• Currently, License Service refreshes the data every 5 minutes. With this frequency, you can capture changes in a dynamic cloud environment. License Service stores the historical licensing data for the last 24 months. However, the frequency and the retention period might be subject to change in the future.
• Provides the API that you can use to retrieve data that outlines the highest license usage on the cluster.
• Provides the API that you can use to retrieve an audit snapshot that lists the highest license usage values for the requested period for products that are deployed on a cluster.
• Supports hyperthreading on worker nodes also referred to as Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) or Hyperthreading (HT)

Note: Only one instance of License Service is deployed per cluster regardless of the number of IBM Cloud Paks and containerized products that you have installed on this cluster.

Deployment

License Service has minimal impact on cluster capacity. License Service works in the background and does not require any configuration or user engagement.

To make sure that this service is successfully deployed, see: Validating License Service deployment.

Storage

License Service does not require persistent storage.

Using License Service for container licensing

After the automatic deployment, License Service collects and measures the license usage of the products that are deployed on the cluster. This data is required for compliance and audit purposes. With License Service, you can use the dedicated APIs to retrieve an audit snapshot for the cluster.

Core license metrics

Currently, supported core-based metrics for container licensing are Processor Value Unit (PVU) and Virtual Processor Core (VPC). For core license metrics, you are obliged to use License Service and periodically generate an audit snapshots to fulfill container licensing requirements. For more information, see Audit snapshot.

If your cluster has hyperthreading, also referred to as Simultaneous multithreading (SM) or Hyperthreading (HT), enabled, see Hyperthreading.

Non-core metrics

License Service additionally collects information about license usage of IBM® software that is enabled for reporting and licensed with other non-core metrics. You can use this data to track the license usage of these products, and determine your entitlement needs. For more information, see Reported metrics.

Tracking license usage in multicluster environment

Note: In multicluster environment, the cumulative report is not required for audit.

You can use the data that is collected by License Service from individual clusters to track the cumulative license usage in a multicluster environment. For detailed information, see Tracking license usage in a multicluster environment.

If you prefer to track license usage without deploying License Service Reporter, you can follow the non-automated procedure. For more information, see Manually tracking license usage in multicluster environment.