IBM virtual processor core (VPC) licenses

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of IBM Virtual Processor Core (VPC) Licenses

    The IBM Virtual Processor Core (VPC) licenses facilitate tracking and management of IBM software licenses, particularly when integrated with Software Asset Management (SAM) providers authorized under the IBM Authorized SAM Provider (IASP) Program. This integration is crucial for ensuring compliance and optimizing license usage.

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    Key Features

    • Integration with the Software Asset Management publisher pack for IBM enables tracking of VPC licenses through IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or BigFix Inventory using version 2 of the integration APIs.
    • Supports both full capacity and sub-capacity VPC licensing when integrated with authorized SAM providers.
    • Full capacity licensing accounts for all processor cores on a physical host, while sub-capacity licensing only considers virtual cores assigned to virtual machines (VMs).

    Key Outcomes

    ServiceNow customers can effectively manage their IBM VPC licenses by leveraging the Usage Type field in the license workbench to distinguish between full capacity and sub-capacity applications. This visibility allows for better compliance and optimization of licensing costs. Customers can navigate to the Software Asset Workspace to specify the application of VPC licenses to devices, ensuring accurate tracking and management of their software assets.

    If you integrate the Software Asset Management publisher pack for IBM with Software Asset Management providers that are authorized to participate in the IBM Authorized SAM Provider (IASP) Program, you can track and manage IBM virtual processor core (VPC) licenses. You can also track and manage these licenses when you integrate with the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or BigFix Inventory using version 2 of the integration APIs.

    With these integrations, the publisher pack adds the Virtual Processor Core (VPC) license metric for IBM so that you can calculate licensing for this license type. For more details on authorized Software Asset Management provider integrations, see IBM Authorized SAM Provider (IASP) integrations. For more details on ILMT and BigFix Inventory integrations, see IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) and BigFix Inventory integrations.

    A virtual processor core (VPC) is a unit of measure that enables you to determine the licensing requirements for an IBM software product based on the number of cores that are available to or managed by that product. If you are licensing a virtual machine (VM), VPC is based on the number of virtual cores that are assigned to the VM. If you are licensing a physical host that is not partitioned for VMs, VPC is based on the number of processor cores on the host. Each VPC license requires one right for every core that is available to or managed by the associated IBM software product.

    If you are integrating the IBM publisher pack with an authorized Software Asset Management provider, the publisher pack supports both full capacity and sub-capacity VPC licensing. If you are integrating with ILMT or BigFix Inventory, the publisher pack supports only sub-capacity VPC licensing. With a full capacity VPC license, you must account for all processor cores on the physical host that is available to or managed by the IBM software product. With a sub-capacity VPC license, which is available only in virtual environments, you must account for only the virtual cores that are assigned to the VMs on which the IBM software product is installed and running.

    You can gain visibility into how your VPC licenses are applied to your devices by using the Usage Type field in the license workbench. Use this information to determine whether your VPC licenses are applied to the full capacity or sub-capacity of each device. If you are integrating with an authorized Software Asset Management provider, you can specify how a VPC license is applied to a device by navigating to Workspaces > Software Asset Workspace. When the Software Asset Workspace launches, open the License operations view. From the left navigation menu of the License operations view, navigate to IBM ASP Integration > Device Settings to modify the value of the corresponding Usage Type field. By default, the Usage Type field is automatically set to Sub-capacity.

    For more details on the available device settings, see Verify the meta data for your IBM hosts.