TSM License on VMWARE

[liorw20]

HI,



I have a Blade Center with ESX installed on, with VMware technology.

I have installed few VM servers on each Blade, and then installed TSM Client

on every VM Server.

How many license should I buy ?

The ESX server is installed on 2 CPU's. ( phisicly )

The VM server is installed on 1 CPU ( virtual ), 5 servers every vm as 1 cpu.



Should I pay for 7 CPU (all include) or only for license for 2 CPU ?



I am looking for an offical artical from Tivoli/IBM.

Please help me found it.



Thanks,

Lior

 

[johnsot]

Lior,



I just had this talk with IBM within the last week. As it stands today IBM ONLY will charge you for the 2 processor license that you are using for your ESX server. All the virtual servers you can load TSM on them and pay nothing as of today. I also had IBM send me a pdf file telling me this as well. If you will send me an email at [email protected] I can send it back to you. If you have any other questions you can call me at 903-531-4459. I understand your delimma it took me about 3 months to get an answer for this exact question.

 

[miscman99]

Ditto, just went thru all that with lic on ESX blah blah, IBM licenses only the physical CPUs nto virtual nodes. Good in this case, bad if you have 1 LPAR on a 32 CPU machine.

 

[flexing]

VMWARE licensing

Hi,

Just went through this recently...You choose whatever the cheaper license option is.

Work out the PVU's for the guests (100 PVU per virtual CPU) and that of the host. You can license the cheaper option. You can confirm this with
IBM just like I did...

At some point there is a sweet spot where host licensing makes more sense than guest based...but that is a lot of guests on a host btw.

For INTEL based
single core 100 PVU or 100 per processor.
dual core 50 PVU per core or 100 per processor

Richard
quad core is 50 PVU per core or 200 per processor

 

[THE_WIPET]

I always use this site as a reference for the famouse PVU'S

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotu...cessor_value_unit_licensing_announcement.html

Same things works for TDP'S... If you are running an exchanges server in a VM using 1 CPU but your ESX is a Quad quad Core... You have to pay for all cores.. so 800 PVU'S/8 TDP licences for 1 Exchange servers.

 

[flexing]

licensing

Hi,

I have that link. It comes with every IBM quote I get.

Everything I have been working on since PVU's came along has been based on this, and what I said below.

This below is an excerpt from IBM SW procurment in May this year when I asked for clarification on vmware and sub-capacity licensing...the ftp link is the best.

"it depends on how the sotfware is deployed - we are happy to license under the lowest of the physical or logical approach as you normally wouldnt deploy ALL software across all logical systems"


http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lot...ing_specific_virtualization_technologies.html

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/SubCapacity/VMware_scenarios.pdf


hope this helps.....



flex..

 

[justjm]

Licensing - sum of vCPUs

We have several of test VMs on our boxes. Would these be included in the sum of vCPU count?

Thanks,

Jen

 

[flexing]

licensing part 2

Look at my mail for the answer..it is whatever is the cheapest option..license by virtual node or physical CPU count of the host.

a vCPU attracts 100PVU, a physical CPU depends upon cores....single core 100PVU..dual core...50PVU per core...and so on.....this is the intel story only....other platforms can be multiples of 80 or 120...weird...

 

[justjm]

Flexing,

Thanks for the reply. I did read through your earlier posts and did find them quite helpful. I was curious about whether or not I had to count test VMs in addition to our production VMs but wouldn't think so if we're not actually backing them up.

IBM licensing is indeed weird and tends to make my head spin but it is what it is.

Thanks again -

 

[flexing]

TSM licensing...

Hi,

IBM does not discriminate between test, dev, acc or prod environments....A server is still a server..

However, if no IBM product is on the server, then no license charges apply...

Here is an example of what I had recently...an ESX host with 4 x quad core processors....this equated to 800 PVU...I had 10 guests with IBM product, all one vCPU...the count here would of been 1000 PVU...I paid only 800 PVU...

so if your host already has the pvu paid for..you can have as many test vms on it as you want......obviously..if the host pvu is more than the guests...then not a good idea (ie 6 guests in my case above)....but then I would question the real value of using VMs at all if this is not the case (unless it is a high resource of performance host...this being a topic in itself..).



flex..

 

[DanGiles]

Just to throw a monkey wrench into the works, have you looked at using VCB? If you have a small VMware installation, I probably wouldn't bother; but if you're intending to grow this environment, I'd look into it. TSM v6 is supposed to have tighter integration with VCB.

 

[hile]

The BA client appears to be licensed via "client device", rather than via PVUs. Is each VM on the ESX host considered a "client device", or is just the ESX server itself considered a "client device"?

 

[DanGiles]

Last time I had to deal with licenses - about a year ago - it was all PVU based; IBM's changing it all the time, so best to talk to your IBM sales rep about that.