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BVQ° licensing overview

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BVQ° is licensed as a combination of

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BVQ° editions and capacities entitlements:

Editions & Packages

Free edition

Entry edition

Enterprise edition

Capacity entitlements

Compute layer (GiB Memory*)

Network layer (Ports)

Storage layer (TiB)

For very large installations, other licensing methods can be used that are mutually beneficial.

* Memory based Compute layer licensing available since

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BVQ° release 2023.H1 (see below)

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BVQ° editions & packages

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BVQ° functionality is tailored to the typical needs of different infrastructure sizes and customer demands:

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BVQ° Enterprise edition

Full

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functionality: Monitoring, reporting, alerting & analysis
Includes

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BVQ° Connect package

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BVQ° Entry edition

Major

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functionality: Monitoring, reporting, alerting

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BVQ° Free edition

Basic functionality for a limited environment size

https://bvq-software.de/en/bvq-license

BVQ° capacity entitlements

The size of a

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BVQ° managed environment is measured with capacity entitlements. Each

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BVQ° edition has a specific price for one of the three following entitlement types related to an IT-

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infrastructure layer grouping the platforms and their systems supported by BVQ. Entitlements are marketed in packages, that contain a specific count of entitlements.

Layer

Licence Entitlement

Packet size

Compute layer

Memory (RAM) capacity GiB count

128 GiB

Network layer

Port count

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25 Ports

Storage layer

Managed Storage capacity TiB count

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10 TiB

Compute layer Memory entitlements

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BVQ° license is validated against the total count of GiB of installed Memory (RAM) of all Compute layer systems monitored by BVQ. The count is independent from the online state or usage of this capacity.

All Compute layer systems must be completely licensed by Virtual machine entitlements or be completely licensed by Memory entitlements. Partial entitlement intermix is not supported.

(warning) Compute layer licensing based on memory is available since

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BVQ° release 2023.H1 and replaces the Compute layer Virtual machine entitlements (see below).

Compute layer Virtual machine entitlements

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If you are still using this type of entitlements, BVQ° license is validated against the total count of all Virtual machines or Logical partitions (VMs) configured of all systems monitored by BVQ. The count is independent from the online state or function of the VMs. IBM PowerVM VIOS are excluded from the count.

In case a

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BVQ° OS Agent is used on a System that is already monitored via PowerVM HMC or VMware vSphere

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BVQ° Scanners, no additional VM entitlement count is needed.

All Compute layer systems must be completely licensed by Virtual machine entitlements or be completely licensed by Memory entitlements. Partial entitlement intermix is not supported.

(warning) Compute layer licensing based on Virtual machine entitlements is no longer available since

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BVQ° release 2023.H1. A migration path to the new Compute layer Memory entitlements (see above) is available. Please ask your SVA contact for details.

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BVQ° Compute layer licensing tries to keep the virtualization layer transparent

In a cascaded compute virtualization layer environment, for example

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Kubernetes containers

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running inside a VMware vSphere hypervisor, the memory capacity is only counted once. Memory discovered in upper compute container nodes provisioned from underlying compute hypervisor systems which are monitored and completely licensed by

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BVQ° is not

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 validated against the

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BVQ° license. Otherwise, memory discovered in upper compute container nodes provisioned from underlying compute hypervisor systems which are not monitored and completely licensed by

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BVQ° is 

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completely validated against the

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BVQ° license.

With that, you can add your Kubernetes environment without additional charge, if the underlying compute hypervisor system memory is licensed already. This provides the

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advantage of a deeper a end-to-end monitoring expertise.

Network layer Port entitlements

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BVQ° license is validated against the total count of all ports of all switches and directors monitored by BVQ, which are activated by a license of the device vendor. The count is independent from the online state or function of the ports. Ports on Core Routing blades in Brocade director class switches only count if a QSFP is plugged into such ports.

Storage layer Capacity entitlements

For the

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IBM storage systems the

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BVQ° license is validated against the total count

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of managed storage pool capacity

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 TiBs of all systems monitored by BVQ. The count is independent from the online state or usage of the capacity.

Managed storage pool capacity

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 is based on the amount of total capacity that is provided by the storage system pools that can be assigned to volumes, filesystems or metadata. This capacity is typical less than the gross raw disk capacity and less than the capacity after volume data reduction (compression, de-duplication, thin provisioning, ...).

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For all other storage systems the BVQ° license is validated against:

  • Netapp ONTAP: Total count of all drive size TiBs

  • Dell Unity: Total count of all pool capacity TiBs

  • Dell PowerStore: Total count of system physical capacity TiBs

  • Pure FlashArray: Total count of system capacity TiBs

NetApp ONTAP Metrocluster

The capacity of Disk Enclosures shared between two NetApp ONTAP IP or FC Metro clustered Systems is only counted once.

BVQ° Storage layer licensing tries not to take care where data reduction takes place

  • In case

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  • of volume data reduction: This  does not affect the total managed capacity of the pools, so it does not affect the

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  • BVQ° license.

  • In case

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  • of pool data reduction:

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  • BVQ° license is validated against the smaller physical allocatable capacity not the logical capacity.

  • In case

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  • of drive level data reduction:

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  • BVQ° license is validated against the smaller physical allocatable capacity not the logical capacity. This is currently only applicable for some systems. All other systems need to be licensed for the pool capacity as explained above.

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  • BVQ° respects drive level data reduction for the following systems:

    • IBM Storwize family systems

    • IBM FlashSystems

  • In case

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  • of thin provisioned MDisks

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  •  provisioned from BE Systems to the Storage virtualization layer (eg IBM Spectrum virtualize (SVC)), the sum of the physical capacity and the sum of the logical capacity is calculated and only the smallest of both results is counted (since

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  • BVQ° release 2021.H2).
    The support of thin provisioned MDisks in the virtualization layer. is required for that. IBM supports that feature for a growing number of backend storage subsystems from IBM and other vendors.

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BVQ° Storage layer licensing tries to keep the virtualization layer transparent

In the storage virtualization layer,

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the managed storage pool capacity

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 of storage pools provisioned by backend storage subsystems monitored and completely licensed by

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BVQ° is not

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 validated against the

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BVQ° license. Otherwise, managed storage pool capacity

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 of storage pools provisioned by backend storage

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subsystems not

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 monitored by

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BVQ° is

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 completely validated against the

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BVQ° license.

You can take the following advantages by including supported backend storage subsystems in your

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BVQ° monitoring:

  • This may decrease the amount of licensed

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  • BVQ° capacity, in case data reduction takes place inside the backed subsystems .

  • e, without additional charge if the backend subsystem capacity is completely provisioned to the virtualization layer.

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BVQ° Storage layer licensing example calculation (based on TiB)

Backend subsystem

Virtualization layer

BVQ

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BVQ° monitored?

Drive physical
capacity

Drive logical
capacity

Pool physical capacity

Pool logical capacity

Volume logical capacity

pool logical
capacity

Licensed
capacity

Reason why

(tick)

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

No data reduction at all

(tick)

100

100

100

100

200

200

100

Volume level data reduction in BE subsystem is respected by BVQ

(tick)

100

100

100

200

200

200

100

Pool level data reduction in BE subsystem is respected by BVQ

(tick)

100

200

100

200

200

200

100

Drive level data reduction in BE subsystem is respected by BVQ

(tick)

N/A (50)

N/A (100)

50

100

100

100

100

Drive level data reduction in BE subsystem not listed to be respected by BVQ

(error)

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A (100)

100

100

No information from BE subsystem: Virtualization layer pool logical capacity counts.

(tick)

100

100

100

100

100

50

100

Not all capacity of a BE subsystem managed by

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BVQ° is provisioned to the virtualization layer: Total managed BE System capacity counts.

(error)

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A (200)

100

100

Not all capacity of the BE subsystem is provisioned to the virtualization layer: Virtualization layer capacity counts.

(error)

N/A

N/A

100

N/A

200

200

100

Inline inquiry information from BE subsystem via thin provisioned MDisks:
Pool level data reduction in BE subsystem is respected by BVQ

(error)

N/A

N/A

200

N/A

100

50

100

Inline inquiry information from BE subsystem via thin provisioned MDisks, but
not all physical capacity of the BE Pool is provisioned to the virtualization layer:
Pool level data reduction in BE subsystem is ignored by BVQ.

Storage layer Enclosure entitlements

This way of licensing is withdrawn from market

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since . Customers with an active

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BVQ° license may still extend their systems with that type of license.

For eligible storage systems, the

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BVQ° license is validated against the total count of all enclosures containing disk drives (controller an expansion enclosures). The count is independent from the online state of the enclosure.

The following storage systems are eligible for

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BVQ° enclosure based licensing: IBM Storwize V5000, V7000, V7000F

  • All Storwize systems' capacity below SVC is not eligible for enclosure based licensing.

  • Standalone Storwize

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  • systems not attached to SVC, must be completely licensed by enclosure or be completely licensed by capacity entitlements. Partial entitlement intermix is not supported.

  • A typical scenario is: A customer has some Backend systems below SVC and some other eligible Storwize systems not  connected to the SVC so they are directly provisioning some hosts with storage capacity. Here the customer can license the direct attached systems by

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  • BVQ° enclosure based licensing and the SVC Capacity by

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  • BVQ° capacity based licensing.

General Terms &

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Conditions

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