Licensing question
Snorri Bergmann asked whether an RSS secondary needs a license, citing an IBM backup-licensing guide. Eric Vercelletto and Art Kagel said a secondary with no client connections needs none. Carlton Doe agreed, said the licensing wording was being clarified (a secondary used for SQL or NoSQL operations must be fully licensed) and promised an Insider article; no official statement was given.
Auto-generated by Claude from the posts below — may be imperfect; read the full thread.
Greetings. I always thought one could fire up an RSS node (enterprise edition) without licensing it as long as no user programs connect to it and perform SQL. A customer asked me this question and referred to a document IBM sent him: https://www.ibm.com/about/software-licensing/assets/guides_pdf/Backup.pdf On page 11 It states: However, the continuous mirroring of data means that the backup copy is doing work and a license to the IBM program must be applied to this warm standby installation. The definition of "doing work" includes synchronization of programs, data or other resources. So basically the RSS node is "Doing work" and should be licensed. Is this something new or does this only apply to Enterprise Replication? Thanks in advance, -Snorri ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
Snori My understanding is that if no user nor client process connects to the RSS Secondary , this is Cold If one of them connects (even for readonly), this is warm. But effectively, IBM writes their contracts so that they can SAY something and write another thing about the same topic, maintaining the doubt... Best people to answer that are Scott and Carlton, who speak on behalf of IBM
Snorri: I agree with your memory and Eric's, RS secondaries do not require any license unless they are accessed by client connections. Server-to-server connections for replication purposes are not counted. Art ------------------------------ Art S. Kagel, President and Principal Consultant ASK Database Management Corp. www.askdbmgt.com ------------------------------
Eric is correct. Unfortunately this confusion may trace back to IBM's usage of Hot/Warm/Cold (HWC) for designating secondaries. It works for other IBM products except for Informix. So you know, we are working to clarify when a license is required and when it isn't in the licensing document. It will say something similar to this when it finally comes out: "For H/A clusters, as long as the secondary node is only functioning as a backup/failover secondary, it can be deployed without an additional IBM Informix license charge. However, if any H/A cluster secondary node is used for SQL or NoSQL operations (read, write or delete), the secondary node must be fully licensed. Shared Disk Secondary (SDS) environments always require a license using the same charge metric as the primary server. Backup operations performed on a secondary is not a licensable activity." I hope that helps ------------------------------ Carlton Doe ------------------------------
Thanks Carlton. This clarifies things. Best regards, -Snorri ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
Hello Carlton. The customer has tried to get something official about this from IBM (in Denmark and Finland) but they always refer to this document that "works for other IBM products except for Informix." They do not want this to be debated in the next software license compliance audit. Can we consider your statement in this discussion thread as an "Official IBM Statement"? Do you have any timeframe for the updated licensing doc? Best regards, -Snorri ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
I understand. Look for an article in the next Insider. the new language is in-process to be added to the license agreements. ------------------------------ Carlton Doe ------------------------------