Can you give us rough idea of the numbers (TSM sever count, number of
clients, data volume, etc) you provided to IBM about your TSM
environment? 

I just got our bill for support and I curious about your setup. 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Frank Fegert
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 2:35 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] per-terabyte licensing deals...

Hello,

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 02:22:42PM -0500, Allen S. Rout wrote:
> Having seen some discussion of recent sighting of per-TB licensing in
> the wild, I trundled over to my business partner to get the skinny.
> Fine BP said no such thing exists to his knowledge.
>
> Could one of you fine folks who have actually seen one of these go by
> provide a few more details, so I can point the hounds in the right
> direction?

well, your BP is - at least from his point of view - right. There
actually isn't a pure volume based licensing, it's just a different
way to calculate how much PVUs you get for the buck for each TSM
product.
IMHO the best course of action is: Got directly to your IBM TSM
sales rep. Tell them you want a business case for switching to TSM
volume based licensing. Don't take "not available in your region,
yet" for an answer, tell them to go figure it out ASAP. If they are
uncooperative - which i don't expect from my experience - escalate
immediately to the next level and pull the "there are other non-IBM
backup products" card. Your time is just too valuable to go back and
forth for weeks on no end. Anyway, you'll be asked a few numbers
about your environment: number of clients for each TSM product,
number of TSM servers, amount of backup volume (sadly including copy
pools), expected growth on all numbers over a course of 3 to 5 years,
expected additional client platforms and/or additional TSM products.
As soon as they have the numbers and the BC ready, you need to setup
a meeting an discuss if volume licensing is an option for you. If so
and you prefer to do buisness over your BC, they will receive a offer
from IBM to sell the new amount of PVUs for the negotiated amount of
money. Again, no volume licenses per se, so even if you decide to
switch back again to PVU based licensing after some time, it's no
trouble at all, since you only purchased PVUs in the first place!

We switched to volume based licensing as of 1st of January. In our
environment it made sense, because we have a proportionately high
amount of clients compared to the relatively low backup volume. TSM
license audit is now only a matter of calculating the sum of all
storage pools, so no more CPU counting, no more PVU nitpicking and
no sublicensing hassle! As mentioned before, the only drawback is
that copy pools do count as well. If it weren't for this, i think
IBM would see a lot more buisness coming its way **hint, hint**.

HTH & best regards,

    Frank