Ed Brill

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1. 1  Tony Bastiaanssen  | 2/26/2007 5:45:26 PM

   We actually could see that, as well with my domino server shares physical hardware with my batch system X, and as such, during the day I want to use 2 out of 8 cpus for domino, but after 10pm I only want to use .2 of a cpu.

1. 2  Stephen Wales  | 2/26/2007 10:02:53 PM

   The possibility exists that a group such as the OpenMosix project (see Linux articles at IBM Developerworks) will get a dynamic multi-processor Linux cluster running that's Domino-friendly. OpenMosix clusters can change the number of available processors frequently, which begs the question of how the licenced number of processors would be counted. Some sort of weighted average, based on (mainframe-style) CPU cycles utilised?

1. 3  Andy Steven http://www.cycle2max.com | 2/26/2007 11:21:09 PM

   How much many does Lotus make from sites with less than 10 users? Not much I suspect. Why not give it away for free for small sites?

   90% of my clients use one server for Domino, file server and so on. Would make an easy way to do manage sub capacity licensing - free..

   Ciao

1. 4  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 2/26/2007 11:46:21 PM

   @3 for those sites, wouldn't Express be the typical acquisition model? Express licenses include Domino Server without a separate charge, so I don't think that segment is where this issue exists.

1. 5  Henning Heinz  | 2/27/2007 2:08:31 AM

   But no anonymous http access for Domino Collaboration Express :-(.

1. 6  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2007 2:14:06 AM

   true, but how would that situation be helped by sub-capacity licensing? I don't think sub-capacity would be structured to fraction off single processors. Utility Express is available to address the anonymous access need.

1. 7  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.com | 2/27/2007 2:35:57 AM

   One potential use of sub-capacity is that it will rapidly become hard to find servers with a small number of cores since (ahem) hardware vendors love to boast about CPU capacity.

   One can imagine a situation where to get the storage or I/O one needs you end up with a couple of processors with several cores each. In the case of Utility server, that could get very expensive in PVUs very quickly. If CPU is not the bottleneck then people might reasonably wish to use sub-cap licensing.

   :)

1. 8  Peter Wilson  | 2/27/2007 3:02:45 AM

   > license based on the number of processor value units associated with the server hardware you run Domino on.

   Why not therefore make it the number of physical or virtual processors where Domino is running (what ever is applicable). So on a 2-way physical server box, based on 2 processors. However, if you want to move your server to a virtual machine (assuming Lotus do support it anyhow) license domino based on the number of virtual processors (VMware now supports up to 4 VCPU's per VM).

   I think customers object to paying for say a 16 processor license if running Domino on a single CPU VM. I've heard of similar issues with Websphere too.

   Pete

1. 9  Dave  | 2/27/2007 4:30:50 AM

   Sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but why is Domino licensed per CPU in the first place? Why is the fact that a server uses multiple processors of any relevance to Domino licensing - surely it should be per server?

   The only reason a server has multiple processors is for better performance of the hardware and software running on it. If you're going to charge more because of this performance advantage, then why not charge more because a server has lots of RAM, or fast HD drives, or fast network connections, etc.?

1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2007 6:07:18 AM

   @9 the PVU FAQ answers that to some degree: { Link }

   Simply put, the number and type of processors tends to correlate to the workload associated with the server moreso than those other factors.

1. 11  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.com | 2/27/2007 6:42:15 AM

   <mildly off topic, since not strictly about sub-cap>

   @9,@10: I understand Ed, and that makes some sense; however, I often find myself wishing there was some way to licence for total load and then deploy whatever type and number of servers one wished in order to achieve great performance for that load. Not suggesting fewer $ per se, just more flexibility in how the service is provisioned on how much hardware. Nowadays hardware is very cheap: but not if you need a new licence for each box.

   Of course the problem is: how to define 'load' in a the context of web/Notes, mail/custom etc. and there, I'm a little stumped :( Perhaps retrospectively based on a number produced from server monitoring?

1. 12  David Russell  | 2/27/2007 7:39:22 AM

   I have always wondered about licensing for dual/quad core processors - the PVU FAQ helped me with that, thanks!

1. 13  Dag Kvello  | 2/27/2007 7:57:15 AM

   Well, I have asked Ed about this some months ago as most customers that run VMware find IBM's definition of a "CPU" extremely unreasonable, especially in light of the fact that most other vendors have gone for a "pr Socket" license.

   I have read the FAQ, I understand what it says, but I still can't accept that there is a SW-tax on my Hardware. I really can't see how it is any business of the SW-vendor how I have configured my HW.

   As @9 say, why not Ghz of CPU ? or GByte RAM? or 10K vs 15K disks or 1333Mhz memory vs 667 Mhz memory ?

   It all makes a difference on the performance.

   The license-model comes from the day when You leased capacity from IBM on IBM's (or other independant DataCenter) 390's, but nowadays customers own their own HW.

   I find it just as unreasonable as if I had to pay a pr. CPU-core license on Excel - after all I could run larger more complex worksheets.....

   On VMware it all becomes just plain stupid and it effectively keeps us from deploying Domino in the new Datacenters.

   Most VMware ESX hosts are 8 to 32 Cores.

   Our VM's run 1 to 2 Virtual CPU's (wich means it can only ever get access to 100% of one ot two physical cores).

   It then seems very unreasonable that customers get a nice big bill in their mail for a 16CPU Domino License when it is only using one.

   When protesting You only get "This is the way we have always done it, if You don't like it install something else".

   The customer does the obvious thing and installs something else, either that or he digs up some old, decommissioned server with one single core CPU and installs Domino.

   Everybody's happy, especially the users......

1. 14  Henning Heinz  | 2/27/2007 8:18:14 AM

   Dag, if

   "This is the way we have always done it, if You don't like it install something else"

   would be true then this blog post would not exist.

1. 15  Kevin Mort  | 2/27/2007 8:24:08 AM

   Ed,

   I can give you an example of real life as well.

   With System i, virtualization is a way of life. One particular box we have runs three i5/OS partitions, two for more traditional work, and one for Domino. This happens to be a 2-way server with the Domino partition being allocated 1 CPU of the two.

   At least in the System i world and elsewhere I suspect - this is very common. Sub-capacity pricing would be a very good thing for Domino, and as you suggest there is indeed precedent for it.

   The license issue with all of this is how do you track or limit usage. Would there be a key which says "sorry you are limited to 1 CPU (core)" if you try to use more than that? This is essentially how it would have to be.

   It can be a complicated issue but on the whole I think this is needed. I should only have to pay for using the code where it really is running, and in a highly virtualized world this is only going to become more important.

   Having said that, I would agree on the Express comments that most customers would go that route which is a user based price and there you have it. However, that doesn't settle all of it since the more traditional method of licensing will still be needed in many, many cases.

   Fact is that licensing is many shades of grey.

   K.

1. 16  Kerr  | 2/27/2007 8:52:42 AM

   I'm not terribly up to date with how this works with Domino, but that's never stopped my having an opinion before ;)

   Does Domino have any licence enforcement built in? With this class of product I think licence enforcement is not as helpful as licence management tools to help tell you how many licences you should have.

   From a VM point of view, I find it odd that IBM doesn't offer pricing that reflects the number of processors available to Domino rather than the number physically in the box. Is this not part of the whole "On Demand" push a while back; have lots of capacity and only pay for it when you use it. To not offer this is just gouging in my book.

   True sub-capacity licensing would involve allowing any configuration where you only pay for CPUs that are used for actual work. So that would allow things like hot failover and standby cluster nodes.

1. 17  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 2/27/2007 9:35:12 AM

   We're increasingly moving toward virtualized servers so we can utilize more of the capacity of the hardware we are purchasing. I honestly didn't know that there was anything in the licensing that deals with virtual CPU's, and I don't see a reference to it in either of the licensing links provided so far.

   I know if I license Domino for the full capacity of a machine with a single OS instance I can partition it as many times as I want. In a virtual world, I may have an 8-way box but the VM only has access to a single CPU. In that case as far as I'm concerned Domino only needs to be licensed for a single CPU. And to be honest, that's how I've been doing it.

   I find the Express licensing in general very, very difficult to understand, to the point I simply gave up. I'm digging back into it now, but it's hard to figure out.

1. 18  Rod Westwood  | 2/27/2007 10:30:00 AM

   We also use iSeries machines for our Domino Servers and have multiple LPARs for various things. Only 2 LPARs are allocated for Domino so we don't use 100% of all CPUs. I don't think we should have to pay for CPUs that Domino is not using. Just my $0.02.

1. 19  Asad Quraishi http://quad4b.blogspot.com | 2/27/2007 10:32:50 AM

   One (out of many) of the reasons we replaced Exchange/Outlook with Domino/Notes was support for non-Windows OSs. We currently run Domino on AIX servers (same platform as our ERP system but different physical boxes). Most of these servers run multiple instances of the OS using micro-partitioning (1/10 CPU increments). Virtualization is price-driven or call it 'reduced total cost of ownership' if you like. reduce the number of boxes, maximize CPU utilization and we:

   1. Save on cooling costs which means we can get more into our datacentre

   2. Save on power so we can get more into our datacentre (our UPS and generator have a limited capacity)

   3. Save on resource costs (manage less hardware) so we can use the money elsewhere

   So, from the licensing FAQ, "The number of licenses is unaffected by how much of that capacity is allocated to the Lotus Domino software, how many copies of the Lotus Domino executable code are actually running on the machine". This is great if I'm running the same kind of domino server on one box. But what if I'm running a QuickPlace server, collaboration server, and messaging replica on 1.2 out of 4 cores each? Pricing becomes confusing...

   Sub-capacity would help me (and my IBM sales rep) understand what I need to order.

   To resume: We virtualize to save costs. Why would we want to pay for more then we're getting when buying software for these VMd servers.

1. 20  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 2/27/2007 12:57:47 PM

   Perhaps I don't understand the subcapacity model, but I have to confess that if I were actually responsible for purchasing licenses (and I'm not), I would use EXACTLY the model Charles is using. I would have used it for the same reason he did, because I would have expected that per-CPU license is per-CPU that actually runs Domino.

   And to be real honest, Ed, if you're saying that it's per physical CPU in the hardware, I would lie to my IBM sales rep about what's in the box.

   Like I said, I'm not responsible for purchasing. I'm not even responsible for licensing recommendations to clients. But if I were, I'd just tell you it was a 1-CPU piece of hardware if there was only one processor allocated to Domino. So perhaps the argument to implement the pricing model should be "it will permit customers to tell us the truth about their real world deployments."

1. 21  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2007 2:15:44 PM

   @20 not really the line I want to put in a corporate business case...

   The whole software industry is built on a degree of trust. Lotus hasn't used copy protection schemes since the days of 1-2-3. In the link to the WebSphere Portal approach in my main posting, it explains how the Tivoli license manager can be used to manage the subcapacity tracking. I would like to think that most customers recognize this and are honest -- perhaps I'm naive or just too trusting. It wouldn't be the first time...

1. 22  mark hughes  | 2/27/2007 3:11:15 PM

   Anyone else getting a blank page at www.notes.net ?

1. 23  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 2/27/2007 3:30:49 PM

   @20 - The question, as I understood it, was "how many CPU's is Domino running on" with an implied "up to the maximum installed in the server". I spoke at length with IBM and Lotus when we went down the VM path, and they are the ones who said this was acceptable.

   @21 - Based on my understanding I don't think I'm being dishonest. When we were planning our migration from iSeries to BladeCenter I was talking to IBM BP's, IBM reps and Lotus reps. Everyone had a different opinion on how the licensing works. If that brain trust can't figure it out I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting it right, and I resent the implication that I'm just trying to screw IBM or Lotus out of licensing revenue.

   Addendum: I went back and read the first link you provided, and it is much clearer than anything I have seen previously. I now see that either I was told incorrectly or the licensing rules changed at some point, possibly in the change to PVU's. In either case, this was not clear to me until maybe 10 minutes ago.

   What I'm still not clear on is the virtualized scenario. If I have 3 VM's running Domino on a 4 CPU dual core box... is that 400 PVU's (50 * 2 * 4) or 1200 (400 per VM)?

1. 24  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 2/27/2007 4:15:53 PM

   @21 - Well, Ed, if you really are charging customers for a 4 CPU deployment in the case where they have a VM running on a 4 CPU piece of hardware, but only 1 CPU is allocated to Domino, then you should EXPECT them to tell you that. You're overcharging them!

   That's what I'm gathering now from a deeper reading of your original question. If that ERP is running on some 16-way powerhouse box, and the Domino licensing is going to be for a 16-processor server, instead of the 2 that will get allocated to Domino, then I'll tell you flat out that you're missing sales opportunities. You're forcing the customer to buy separate hardware to meet your licensing restrictions, which means you've increased their TCO and their bargaining costs with you. So some amount of potential licenses are being missed, probably by having some group of users sit on a different server across a WAN link, where they're probably frustrated by the performance and sit around complaining about how much Notes sucks.

   @23 - I don't think Ed was accusing you. I was the one flat out saying "I would lie to you and tell you there was only one processor in the box." And I used provocative language on purpose because I wanted to get Ed's attention. While it might be unfair and untrustworthy for me to fudge my hardware numbers, it is more unfair and untrustworthy for IBM to insist that I should have to pay for hardware that their software isn't even using.

   Plus, I'm not responsible for maintaining anyone's license agreements anywhere in the world, so I really don't have much at risk when I say "I would lie to you." ;-)

1. 25  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.com | 2/27/2007 4:24:19 PM

   @21 - I think you will find that people who think a licencing scheme is fair, will adhere to it. If they think it is unfair or unrealistic (such as charging for all the cores even if not used) will not.

   Personally I would love to see user-based pricing completely disconnected from the hardware (cpus/servers/whatever).

   "not really the line I want to put in a corporate business case..." -- why not? Since "Lotus hasn't used copy protection schemes since the days of 1-2-3." Nathan's point seems extremely apt. I don't think it would reduce revenue, quite the reverse since it would lower the barrier on expansion.

   :)

1. 26  jimmy bracco http://www.lotus911.com/blogs/boj/boj.nsf | 2/27/2007 4:39:10 PM

   I would be interested in how they would handle Microsofts Virtual server, which does not allow allocation of multiple CPU's (yet) to specific VM's.

   So you could have an 8 way box running 1 VM of domino and only able to utilize 1 cpu on that box...but have to pay for the 8 cpu's.

   I think the licensing should work like this:

   keep the CPU "units"

   whatever percentage of "units" my domino CPU is using, that’s what I pay for.

   For example:

   1)on a 2 way CPU box if i install domino on the root OS , its 200 points.

   2)If I install Domino on a VM on that same box and its only allocated 1cpe, then i pay for 100 points.

   3) if a ramp down the CPU available to that same VM for only 50% utilization, then i pay for 50 points.

   NOW the real trick is to build some sort of tracking tool (may be easier for the OS) so that I can pay for my licenses AFTER the fact instead of before, for the year.

   Still voluntary as it is now, but just a FYI like the user tracker in domino

   This way if at certain times of the day, or perhaps in the middle of the year when i want to throw more CPU at the VM because I've grown, I can pay that point percentage for the time that I use it.

   Licensing payment would look more like a stock market graph than anything else.

   That is the only TRUE way to do software licensing, but I haven’t met a company that does it yet. IMHO

1. 27  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.com | 2/27/2007 4:43:20 PM

   @23 & @24 - I concur. If licencing is confusing then people will simply avoid/evade and Lotus will miss revenue.

1. 28  Kerr  | 2/28/2007 4:43:43 AM

   @Ed, let me put forward a hypothetical case to clarify what the current IBM licence requirements for Domino are.

   Alice (in good ol' CS style) has a blade chassis taking up 8U's in a rack. It is fully populated with 16 blades each with 2*duel core x86 cpus. 64 cores in the blade chassis. Alice runs Domino on 2 of those blades. Domino is the only thing running on those 2 blades (other than OS). Alice has licences to run Domino on 8 cores (400 processor value units).

   Bob (Alice's PHB), tells Alice to switch out all the blades for a single machine with 64 cores. Lets say, 16*quad core x86 cpus. Her VM software allows her to allocate specific cpu cores. So she splits them up exactly as she had the blades. 2 VMs running Domino, each with 4 cores allocated.

   Does Alice need licences for a) 8 cores (400 pvus) or b) 64 cores (3200 pvus)?

   If the answer is 'b', can you explain why IBM thinks that is fair?

1. 29  David Leedy  | 2/28/2007 7:13:54 AM

   I am not responsible for licensing ibn my company, but I thought Domino already had sub-capcity licensing. In the July 25th announcement where IBM introduced the Processor Value unit licensing, it specifically mentions Lotus alongside Websphere. Then as a key benefit they mention the ability to enable sub-capacity licensing....

1. 30  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/1/2007 1:49:34 AM

   @28 the answer is "b". I'm not going to comment on what the collective IBM thinks, but I would like to find a way to align with the way the product is used in customer scenarios. Other than appealing to a sense of "fairness", though, I need to have some business data. This thread has been helpful so far, but I honestly expected there was more interest in the topic overall. I also thought I'd find more scenarios where sub-capacity licensing would provide ways of altering Domino deployments, but there's really only been one-such scenario discussed so far.

1. 31  Kerr  | 3/1/2007 5:18:54 AM

   @ed, At the moment I have no say in how Domino is deployed anywhere and how that would impact a server infrastructure. It's just not in my current job description, so I can't help you find a real example.

   What I can say is that I think the current licensing requirements are grossly unfair in the scenario I outlined previously. If I was in Alice's position I'd be extremely pissed off with IBM for artificially restricting the infrastructure choices available to me.

   Why would I put Domino on any box where it wasn't the only thing running?

   So customers have a choice:

   a) Don't deploy domino on any box that it isn't the only thing running.

   b) Spend a fortune on buying licences for which they gain NO actual benefit.

   c) Lie to IBM.

   It's ridiculous that IBM can offer an OS with features to allocate fractional CPU resources to particular applications but do not offer licensing terms in their software to take advantage of that.

   The very least IBM should be doing here is only require licences for CPUs that are actually being used. They could also go much farther in offering flexibility and "On Demand" computing.

   Offering a licence where you only pay for what you actually use in a fine grained way would of course be great. How fine grained: Monthly, weekly, daily? I have a spike in my requirement, so I just spool up another couple of servers or allocate another couple of CPUs. I get over the spike and I cut back the servers again. Of course you could charge more depending on the granularity of the licensing. 365* pvu day rate should cost a lot more than the year rate.

   If this flexibility is seen to add too much risk to IBM's financial planning, you could sell "options" to use flexible licensing. Like a stock option, the customer would pay a small fee upfront for the option to use Domino for a given period on a given number of CPUs. If they decide that they want to exercise the option then they pay the full amount of the licence value. Thus IBM gets money just for allowing flexibility.

1. 32  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 3/1/2007 7:35:24 AM

   @30 - I don't think you're hitting your target audience for this question. There are only a couple whom I know to be running Domino on iSeries or zSeries, and high-density Intel servers just aren't that common.

1. 33  david racicot  | 3/1/2007 2:39:41 PM

   Ed. Unless I am missing something, to purchase a Domino Utility license for the hardware mentioned @28 would cost $206 x 3200 = $659200. Say bye bye to any new sales of this! Obviously this licensing issue needs to be resolved and soon. I am about to warn my large customer here to re-think their HW plans (which they are probably talking about with IBM HW sales people, but now will say likely balk at buying that nice new multi cpu box).

1. 34  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/1/2007 3:21:46 PM

   @33 - Are you suggesting that a single-core processor, which would therefore have a value of 50 PVU by that calculation, costs $206 + 50 = $10300? Isn't there an "express" version of this?

   10 grand to have authenticated users on a public server!? As I've said several times, I'm not responsible for any license purchasing anywhere in the world, but that seems like a LOT of money to me.

1. 35  david racicot  | 3/1/2007 3:34:24 PM

   @34. Actually a Single Core (all platforms) is 100PVU so you are looking at $20600. I got the $206 from the link at the top of this blog topic. Yes there is an Express price which is much less.

1. 36  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 3/1/2007 4:33:10 PM

   Nathan, single core is 100 PVU, dual or quad core is 50 per core. If you just want authenticated access and no messaging components, then Express is more compelling since it's only $25.75 per PVU, or $2,575 total for a single or dual core server. HOWEVER -- with Express you lose a lot of functionality, such as partitions, clustering and directory assistance, so it's a trade-off that has to be carefully weighed.

   I'm still sifting through the Express licensing. So far, for our 200 users, the pricing for express is slightly higher based on list prices.

1. 37  Kerr  | 3/2/2007 4:34:53 AM

   After reading over some of the licensing faqs I've realised that if Alice (in my example @28) installed Domino on all of her blades, but didn't use them, just had them as warm standby, she would still only have to pay for 800 pvus. Aarrgh.

   On a related note, I have development servers provided for me so I don't have any licence worries there. The last time it looked like I might need to licence a dev environment I was looking at some developerworks licence that pretty much allowed a developer to run anything they wanted as long as it was for development only. So I could spool up 10 domino servers and WebSphere servers and db2 servers at no extra licence cost. The main caveat was that you had to have the developerworks licence for every developer that touched a box licenced that way. That developerworks licence has since been discontinued, so what's best practice for licensing for development now?

1. 38  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 3/2/2007 11:46:59 AM

   See this article, "Multicore move cuts Oracle database cost", which addresses the core issue, so to speak:

   { Link }

1. 39  Mark Leusink http://www.teletop.nl | 9/24/2008 8:37:36 AM

   A bit late, but since I got here through Google, perhaps others do too:

   Sub-capacity licensing with Domino is available, see:

   { Link }

1. 40  Sean Cull http://www.focul.net | 2/27/2009 11:25:10 AM

   Ed,

   this is an old post and much progress has been made in this area but there are two notable exceptions for me. I am looking at what we can do with Xpages apps and one scheme is to sell a bundle with express utility, some xpages based apps and a Xen based virtual server - something to compete with LAMP platforms

   Problem is Xen is not a recognised VM platform for IBM - link below and Utility Express is not available as a sub capacity licence offering ( although most other flavours of Domino are )

   ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/SubCapacity/Eligible_Virtualization_Technology.pdf

   ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/SubCapacity/VMware_scenarios.pdf

   Can these two restrictions be overcome ?

   Thanks, Sean ( also posted on BP forum )

1. 41  Mark Leusink http://www.teletop.nl | 4/17/2009 6:34:52 AM

   @40 - Sub capacity licensing will also become available for Utility Server Express:

   { Link }