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Tags: Domino
At a customers project we ordered a new small server for our development team. The smallest hardware available was a dual processor quad core Intel Xeon machine. Now we need to buy licences for Lotus Domino. The Processort value unit calculator tells me, that I need 400 value units. Well, this is a bunch of money and the project manager asked if we can lower the licensing costs? My first thought was virtualization. Install VMWare or Xen or any other product of choice and run the Domino server within a VM. But it seems there's something new (at least to me): IBM calls it Sub-capacity Licensing.
This presentation lines out, that you must license to the full capacity of server if you are not using this new Sub-capacity Licensing. Does that mean I need to buy 400 value units even if I install the Domino server within a VM with only one processor enabled?
If so, the new licensing model seems to be interesting. But what are the requirements?

Customers must:

• Agree to the terms of the Sub-capacity Attachment, and follow Virtualization
  Capacity License Counting Rules for the Eligible Virtualization Environment(s)
• Use Eligible Sub-capacity Products, with sub-capacity part numbers
• Use Eligible Virtualization Technologies
• Use Eligible Processor Technologies
• Use the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) and maintain report documentation
  (Certain ILMT use exceptions may apply)

OK, but what the hell is ILMT and what is it about? At first I expected a small and easy to manage application. But hey, we're talking about IBM. So expect the unexpected:

DB2 and Websphere. Well, I can hear my customer say: "Hello IBM, can you hear me? I've got one little small and tiny development server and I don't want to pay for 8 cores and I also don't want to maintain the DB2 and Websphere stuff!"

Nothing to complain about. As mentioned before there are some "exceptions" for ILMT which you can find here.

Eligibility Criteria: Customers must use the IBM License Metric Tool, with the following exceptions

• ILMT does not support the Eligible Virtualization Environment
• Customer has fewer than 1000 employees and contractors -Tool recommended
• Customer server Full Capacity licensing for a PVU product is less than 1000 PVUs
  (on servers with an Eligible Virtualization Environment)

We're happy enough, because the server Full Capacity licensing is less than the 1000 PVUs. So we're done? For sure not! If the mentioned excpetions are valid for you, there are also some new requirements:

Requirements: For the above exceptions, customers must manually manage, track and prepare Audit Reports

• A separate Audit Report must be prepared for each Eligible Sub-Capacity Product deployed for each Eligible Virtualization Environment
  (Which can be a Single Server or a Group of Servers “Cluster”)
• Audit Reports must be prepared as frequently as is required to maintain a history of increases to Virtualization Capacity and Full Capacity
• Each Audit Report must be signed and date stamped, at least onceper quarter

Did I miss something or is that really the way you must license your Domino environment? If so, our solution might be pretty easy: We will pull one of the processors out of our small and tiny development server and are saving 50% of licensing costs.