Physical core-based licenses IBM

Physical core-based licenses IBM

ii Physical core-based licenses

Contents Physical core-based licenses..... 1 iii

iv Physical core-based licenses

Physical core-based licenses A physical core-based license is a unit of measure that is used to determine the licensing cost of Microsoft products. It is based on the number of physical cores that are deployed on the host where the software is installed. When the software is installed on multiple hosts, all cores from all hosts contribute to the total number of cores for which licenses are required. Because this license type is based on physical cores, the same number of cores is assigned regardless of whether the software is installed on a physical host or on a virtual machine. Depending on the processor type, Microsoft requires that an appropriate core factor is applied to calculate the number of required licenses. The number of cores that is reported by BigFix Inventory represents the actual number of physical cores without any core factor applied. The minimal number of licensable cores is four. It means that processors with one and two cores are assigned four cores. The number of cores that is reported by BigFix Inventory takes this requirement into consideration. Supported software Reporting of physical core-based licenses is supported for the following software: v Microsoft SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2016 (Standard and Enterprise). Only SQL Server Database Engine is discovered. Other components are not discovered. Requirements To report the number of physical cores for the discovered Microsoft software, ensure that VM managers are defined for all virtual machines in your environment. If a VM manager is not defined for a particular host, the number of cores on the host is counted as 0. As a result, license utilization might be underestimated. If you define VM managers only for a subset of machines in your infrastructure, a warning ( ) is displayed on the All Metrics report to indicate a potential inaccuracy. The warning is displayed regardless of whether Microsoft software is installed on machines for which VM managers are not defined. If you are sure that Microsoft software is not installed on these machines, you can ignore the warning. However, it is a good practice to define all VM managers in the infrastructure to ensure that correct results are reported. Limitations Reporting of physical core-based licenses has the following limitations: v The warning about missing VM managers is visible only on the user interface. It is not visible in the CSV or PDF version of the All Metrics report. v If a product is removed after a period shorter than 90 days, it is not visible on any of the reports. However, it is included in the overall license metric count. v Information about products that use the physical core-based metric is not contained in the audit snapshot. 1

Scenarios The following scenarios describe how the number of required licenses is calculated. The calculations are based on sample values and should be treated as examples. Scenario 1: Software is deployed on a physical server Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on a physical computer with a dual-core processor. According to the licensing terms, the processor is assigned four cores. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 4. Table 1. Utilization of the physical core-based licenses in a physical environment Host 1 Physical cores on the host 2 Core licenses needed 4 Scenario 2: Software is deployed on two virtual machines Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on two virtual machines that run on a host with 10 cores. The cores are shared by the virtual machines. The number of virtual cores that are assigned to a virtual machine is ignored and BigFix Inventory reports the total number of physical cores on the host. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 10. Table 2. Utilization of the physical core-based licenses in a virtual environment Virtual Machine 1 Virtual Machine 2 Virtual cores 8 16 Physical cores on the host 10 10 Core licenses needed 10 Scenario 3: Software is deployed on a virtual machine that was migrated between hosts Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on a virtual machine that runs on a host with 10 cores. Within a period of 90 days from the software discovery, the virtual machine is migrated to another host that also has 10 cores. The number of cores from the two hosts is added. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 20. Table 3. Utilization of the physical core-based licenses for a virtual machine that was migrated Host 1 Host 2 Physical cores 10 10 Core licenses needed 20 Scenario 4: Software instance uses a different license metric Two instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise are discovered. The first instance uses the physical core-based metric. The second instance uses a different metric, for example virtual core-based. To ensure that only the first instance contributes to the calculation of the physical core-based metric, reassign the second instance to the proper metric. If the metric is not available in the software catalog, exclude the instance from pricing calculations. 2 Physical core-based licenses

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