[gpfsug-discuss] Spectrum Scale licensing - important correction

[Carl Zetie - carlz@us.ibm.com]

>Now the question, ESS is license per Drive or by capacity?

I apologize for the confusion. Within IBM Storage when we say “capacity” licensing we use that as an umbrella term for both Per TB/PB *or* Per Drive (HDD or SSD). This is contrasted with “processor” metrics including Socket and the even older PVU licensing.

And yes, we IBMers should be more careful about our tendency to use terminology that nobody else in the world does. (Don’t get me started on terabyte versus tebibyte…).

So, for the sake of completeness and for anybody reviewing the thread in the future:


  *   Per Drive is available with ESS, Lenovo DSS, and a number of other OEM solutions*.
  *   Per TB/Per PB is available for software defined storage, including some OEM solutions - basically anywhere where figuring out the number of physical drives is infeasible.**
  *   You can if you wish license ESS with Per TB/PB, for example if you want to have a single pool of licensing across an environment that mixes software-defined, ESS, or public cloud; or if you want to include your ESS licenses in an ELA. This is almost always more expensive than Per Drive, but some customers are willing to pay for the privilege of the flexibility.

I hope that helps.



*(In some cases the customer may not even know it because the OEM solution is sold as a whole with a bottom line price, and the customer does not see a line item price for Scale. In at least one case, the vertical market solution doesn’t even expose the fact that the storage is provided by Scale.)

**(Imagine trying to figure out the “real” number of drives in a high-end storage array that does RAIDing, hides some drives as spares, offers thin provisioning, etc. Or on public cloud where the “drives” are all virtual.)




Carl Zetie
Program Director
Offering Management
Spectrum Scale
----
(919) 473 3318 ][ Research Triangle Park
carlz at us.ibm.com

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