Limiting Processing Cores for TM1 Server

[mce]

Hi,

As you know TM1 has PVU based server licensing, which limits the processing capacity that we can allocate to TM1 servers.
If I have PVU licenses that allow me to use only 4 cores and if I have 12 cores available in my physical machine, how can I limit the processing cores that are allocated toTM1?
I know I can use virtual machine for this purpose which has only 4 cores allocated, but what are the other options if there is no virtualisation technology available. Is there a technique to limit the number of cores TM1 services can use in a physical machine?

Thanks in advance for any helpful response.
Regards,

[stephen waters]

As you know TM1 has PVU based server licensing,

New Enterprise TM1 servers have been sold on a PVU basis for several years now. But, just for clarity, Cognos Express is not licensed on a PVU basis and customers on legacy Applix licensing may still be on processor based licensing.

Is there a technique to limit the number of cores TM1 services can use in a physical machine? Regards,

Apart from virtualisation or taking out one processor chip I am not aware of any other techniques and I have asked IBM on several occasions. Any technique would need to meet the IBM guidelines for "sub capacity licensing"; if you want to mess your brain up you can read the documents at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/pa ... nsing.html

Is there a problem with installing eg VMWare? Likely to be much cheaper than paying for an extra 560 PVUs!

The irony of the PVU licensing is, of course, that with a single TM1 instance your 12 cores are all likely to be operating at 8.3% when doing calcs!

[Andy Key]

... or taking out one processor chip...

Does that actually change the PVU rating?

The IBM PVU Table states "Maximum number of sockets per server" rather than "Number of sockets that actually have a chip in them". So wouldn't it be necessary to change the motherboard?

I've asked the question of IBM a couple of times, and am yet to receive a straight answer, and given that people within IBM have been known to ring Stephen up to ask him what the currently licensing regime is, I'm happy to accept his opinion!

[tomok]

The answer is to run VMWare. There is no other way to allocate computing resources as it regards TM1 as there are no internal functions inside TM1 to do this sort of thing, unlike more enterprise savvy apps like Hyperion, SQL Server, etc. It seems like everyone is using VMWare these days. I've even had clients run TM1 under a virtual image when it was the only app on the box to take advantage of the management features in VMWare and because all their other apps were running on VMWare images. I think IBM is intentionally vague on this topic (imagine that!).

[lotsaram]

The answer is to run VMWare. There is no other way to allocate computing resources as it regards TM1 as there are no internal functions inside TM1 to do this sort of thing, unlike more enterprise savvy apps like Hyperion, SQL Server, etc. It seems like everyone is using VMWare these days. I've even had clients run TM1 under a virtual image when it was the only app on the box to take advantage of the management features in VMWare and because all their other apps were running on VMWare images. I think IBM is intentionally vague on this topic (imagine that!).

Although do watch out for the potential sting in sub-capacity licensing. The auditors in IBM's employ argue that VMWare CPU resources can be scaled up and down and unless you have IBM Tivoli monitoring software installed and configured to track CPU allocation to VM over time to prove you haven't just allocated server resources to the PVU licensing constraint conveniently to coincide with the auditor's visit then big blue will try and go you for the PVU of the physical host server.

[foogy]

Although do watch out for the potential sting in sub-capacity licensing. The auditors in IBM's employ argue that VMWare CPU resources can be scaled up and down and unless you have IBM Tivoli monitoring software installed and configured to track CPU allocation to VM over time to prove you haven't just allocated server resources to the PVU licensing constraint conveniently to coincide with the auditor's visit then big blue will try and go you for the PVU of the physical host server.

Great, ha? And OF COURSE IBM offers consultancy in setting up the Tivoli monitoring software (ILMT - IBM Licence metric tool) for cash. They really figured out how to make money out of sh... I've spent hours in setting up the ILMT and finally almost brought it to an end. Almost, because the ILMT server requires read to access to the wohle VMWare Management console to retrieve the physical hardware information. This is crazy and paranoid. Our Data Center was not very open-minded in granting access to the Management console for such a reason. So we ended up at that point and are currently still running without that monitoring thing. Of course our CPU usage is consistant with the PVUs we've bought. So the only thing that's not OK in terms of sub-capacity licencing is that we cannot proove that we do not trick IBM whith scaling up and down CPUs all the times.

I don't understand why the monitoring clients that need to be intalled on each TM1 server do not just report their current (virtual) hardware characteristics to the ILMT server and that's it. If the monitoring client detects two cores on the TM1 virtual server, why does ILMT still want to check that information against VMWare Console? You can even read the name and type of the physical processor inside the virtual machine - or is IBM afraid that this information is being manipulated in order to save PVU? I can only shake my head. May the auditors come and do their honorable job ... there are also other vendors on the market that do not build their customer relationships on mistrust and put their customer under general suspicion unless they proove their CPU allocation.