Check out the HCL BigFix support for IBM Sub-capacity conditions

Since June 30th 2019 BigFix has become an HCL product. What does this mean for your IBM Sub-capacity support and reporting obligations conform Passport Advantage Agreement (PA)?

IBM’s default is based on Full-capacity, but in most cases Sub-capacity is financially very attractive. Generally, IBM allows 4 methods of reporting to adhere to IBM Sub-capacity conditions:

• Reporting with IBM’s License metric tool (ILMT)
• Reporting with Flexera FlexNet Manager Suite (FNMS)
  • FNMS can be used after a signed PA addendum agreement by both IBM and the customer, and the technical implementation is done correctly.
• Manual Reporting is allowed:

• • When ILMT does not yet support the virtualization environment or product;
  • When Client is not a Service provider and
  • Client has not contracted with a Service provider and
  • Client has < 1000 employees and
  • Client has < 1000 PVU.Manual Reporting is allowed:
• Reporting with HCL’s BigFix tool

IBM and HCL have established a collaboration agreement aimed to continue to have BigFix accepted as an alternative solution to ILMT for IBM Virtualization Capacity reporting (Sub-capacity). When requested by HCL, IBM will perform a validation of BigFix Inventory updates to verify equivalence to ILMT version/release/updates.

The following table lists BigFix Inventory versions/releases/modifications (V/R/M) that have been validated by IBM for equivalence to the corresponding V/R/M of ILMT for IBM Virtualization Capacity reporting requirements:

Careful planning is necessary for new eligible processors, operating systems or virtualizations. BigFix support for new eligible processors, operating systems or virtualizations in relationship to IBM Virtualization Capacity will be available only after validation has been done by IBM. So, customers should wait for IBM validation of BigFix Inventory before using it on newly added operating systems, virtualization platforms or processors supported by ILMT.