Another incredulous TSM Client license question

[Eisen]

Ok, my company have just had "that" conversation with IBM, where IBM claim that a mistake has been made and that our understanding of 'client' is wrong. They are trying to claim that because all the boxes we back up via TSM (around 3000 of them) are not desktops or laptops, that they all require full per-CPU server licenses.



I'm just incredulous that IBM can turn round and say this, particularly when we back up tiny amounts of data on each of our TSM clients (~50mb tops). You get utterly shafted depending on your topology.



Now, salient questions:



- does this licensing standard apply if you're on 5.2, as we are?

- any plans to change the utterly misleading nomenclature of 'client' and 'server' if that's not what IBM mean?



Any quick help would be most gratefully appreciated. Also I'd like to hear from anyone in the same boat and what the end result was.



Thanks all.

 

[heada]

I think you could argue with them that since you license a "managed system - LAN" that there is no distinction between a laptop/desktop/server/really-big-server.



You can also ask them how you license a virtual server (a server running on VMWare) since it has no processors of it's own.



I think that most days, IBM doesn't understand IBM's licensing.



-Aaron

 

[Eisen]

I can understand IBM's motivation to move to a per-CPU model, to try to counteract larger, more powerful boxes resulting in fewer licenses. But the whole "client licences only count as desktops or laptops" is total nonsense.



I like the VMWare question, no doubt IBM would try to charge you for the entire underlying box and for each of the virtual servers on it. Twice. Per-CPU. And double in a leap year.

 

[PJ]

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Well, yeah.. who could?



Cheers

PJ

 

[storageman]

IBM probaly had a newbie on the call.



If you back up your 3000 clients to one P570 with 16 CPUs (even split into multiple LPARs) you only pay based on 16 CPUs.



If they continue to extort, tell them your evaluating Veritas Netbackup. That will get their attention.



Regards,



Yakoputz

 

[Harry_Redl]

Hi,



well - I am VERY interested in this discussion. I have asked IBM last week similar question

what kind of a licence and number needed (TSM managed CPU vs TSM Client licence (which is 10 times cheaper)) I have to buy if I want to backup W2k3 server with 2 CPU (node) to a W2k3 1CPU (server) .... their answer was 3 managed CPU and no client as for them client is only single user machine like WinXP ....

And that was no newbie there, it was a head of Tivoli section of IBM Czech Rep ....



Souds silly to me .... Does ANYONE has a link into deeps of the IBM website to get valid, current and official licensing guide to TSM?



Thanx



Harry

 

[PJ]

I don't think the number of users matters. Our legal fought it through with IBM and they finally concluded, that any machine "sharing ressources" is considered a server and needs a full license (times number of CPUs), so an XP Workstation with only a single user account but an exported share or printer would already be a full client. Same goes for application or DB servers. I think this makes sense, or does it?



Cheers

PJ

(We're on a site license for all IBM software now - and that's really how it should be. You just install and don't ask. And I don't want to know how much that was )

 

[Eisen]

Thanks for the responses, guys. IBM seem to be pushing a number of outrageous concepts here:



- that anything that's not a desktop/laptop cannot use a client licence, and must be licensed per-CPU with a server license (i.e. exactly as you license your TSM server).

- that having extended edition (which unless you've got a tiny library you've got to get) automatically means all your other licences must be extended edition. So not only are we to pay for server licences for what we (and anyone normal) would consider to be clients, but we've got to pay the extra for EE server licenses.



Anyway, if anyone has argued this to its conclusion with IBM let me know how you got on. I'll keep you updated...

 

[bundy_bare]

Heres a thing you can do, if its only tiny amounts of non-system data you need to backup from each server, Why don't you set up a manual robocopy (For Windows boxes) or (Rscync for Novell), it will be a lot of work, but if its done automagically with an SMTP flag for errors only, you can copy all of your data to a single server daily and just backup the single server with TSM. Even if you do this to 100 Servers out of your 3000 You are still saving bucketloads of cash. Plus have you spoken to an IBM reseller? You will get a great discount if you are looking at so many TSM licences. We are doing that from all types of clients ie Linux, Novell, Windows without any problems at all.

 

[icewalker]

We just went through an Audit regarding Tivoli Licenses in general, with TSM being one of the items we had to deal with.

Here is what we have.

1. You need a managed license if the system shares resources, ie webserver, fileserver, etc. Basically, if you call it a server and nobody actually physically sits at the thing all day and uses it as a workstation, it is managed.

The licensing is convoluted and is based on value units. And the number of value units is based on processor, cores, and type of processor. Drives me crazy! My conclusion, as long as you are intel and as long as you don't have anything bigger than a dual core, you need 100 value units per physical CPU. If you have quad core, then it is 200 value units (50 vu's per core). If it is an AMD Opteron, well look it up, but it is something along those lines.

We got lucky, we only have dual core systems at most, so doing the math was easy.

Hyperthreading doesn't affect the license.

2. VMWARE!!! Or any other virtual system such as LPAR or XEN.

TSM is not licensed on processors for the virtual machine. IBM is only interested in the actual physical machine ... for now. So if you have 4 virtual machines working on a dual processing dual core system, then you need 200 value units (100 per physical processor) to license that machine properly.

3. If you get audited, workstations do count. But I can't say how that license worked out for us. We only had three workstations on TSM and since we are "over licensed" it was a moot point.

4. The auditors wanted a node list from TSM, but the number of nodes was greater than the physical systems. We had to go through that with the auditors. Our Domino systems have several nodes on TSM. But again, it is physical systems, not registered nodes, that count.

Basically, TSM licensing is based on physical systems and processors; not virtual systems. So if you LPAR an iSeries and run AIX, they will count the processors only, not the LPARs.

Good Luck!