The base license that is provided with your system includes the
use of its basic functions. However, extra licenses
can also be purchased to expand the capabilities of your system.
Administrators are responsible for purchasing
extra licenses and configuring the systems within the license agreement, which includes
configuring the settings of each licensed function on the system.
The system supports both differential and
capacity-based licensing. For example, with external virtualization differential licensing
charges different rates for different types of storage, which provides cost effective management
of capacity across multiple tiers of storage. Licensing for these functions are based on the
number of storage capacity units (SCUs) purchased. With other functions, like remote mirroring
and FlashCopy®, the license grants a specific number
of terabytes for that function.
The system supports the following licensing models:
- Standard Edition
- This model is based on the total number of terabytes (TB) that the system is licensed for FlashCopy and remote-copy functions. Virtualization and Real-time Compression use the differential
licensing scheme. The Real-time Compression
limit is the total virtual capacity of all the compressed volumes in the system.
- Differential licensing
- Differential licensing is the term used to refer to the measurement of virtualization and
compression licenses, where different types of storage are charged at different rates. Differential licensing is a license unit within the
SAN Volume Controller
standard edition license.
Differential
licensing uses a storage capacity unit (SCU)-based license scheme for virtualization and compression
licenses. For each SCU, a client is entitled to manage different amounts of usable capacity based on a
storage category classification. Table 1 identifies
the storage categories and SCU ratios for each category.
Table 1. Storage capacity unit categories and ratios
| Storage category |
Included storage types |
SCU ratio |
| 1 |
Flash and solid-state drives (SSDs) |
1 SCU equates to 1.00 TB usable of Category 1 storage |
| 2 |
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives and Fibre Channel drives |
1 SCU equates to 1.18 TB usable of Category 2 storage |
| 3 |
Nearline SAS (NL-SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) drives |
1 SCU equates to 4.00 TB usable of Category 3 storage |
- Table 2 provides an example of how SCU licensing
might work based on category types.
Table 2. Example of SCU usage
| Storage category |
TB usable |
SCU ratio |
Total SCUs |
| 1 |
42 |
1 |
42 |
| 2 |
400® |
1.18 |
339 |
| 3 |
800 |
4 |
200 |
| Totals |
1242 |
|
581 |
The system supports the following licensed
functions:
- External Virtualization
- Enter the total number of storage capacity units (SCUs) you are licensed to virtualize
across tiers of storage on your system. The system supports virtualization licensing for
different tiers of storage. A license can be purchased for a specific quantity of storage
capacity units (SCU) which can be used to virtualize a designated number of tebibytes (TiB) of
storage. The used capacity for each tier can be monitored to learn how the virtualization
license is distributed across the following tiers of storage:
- Tier 0 Flash
- Tier 0 flash contains high performance tier 0 flash drives. The Used SCU value indicates
the amount of SCU that this tier has used of the total number of licensed SCUs. The system
converts that information into the Used TiB value.
- Tier 1 Flash
- Tier 1 flash contains high performance tier 1 flash drives. The Used SCU value indicates
the amount of SCU that this tier has used of the total number of licensed SCUs. The system
converts that information into the Used TiB value.
- Enterprise Tier
- The enterprise tier contains Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives. The Used SCU value
indicates the amount of SCU that this tier has used of the total number of licensed SCUs.
The system converts that information into the Used TiB value.
- Nearline Tier
- The nearline tier contains nearline SAS drives. The Used SCU value indicates the amount
of SCU that this tier has used of the total number of licensed SCUs. The system converts
that information into the Used TiB value.
- FlashCopy
- The FlashCopy function copies the contents of a
source volume to a target volume. The FlashCopy function is also used to create cloud snapshots of volumes in systems that have
transparent cloud tiering enabled. The used capacity for FlashCopy mappings is the sum of all of the volumes that are the source volumes of a FlashCopy mapping and volumes with cloud snapshots.
- Remote Mirroring
- The remote-mirroring function configures a relationship between two volumes. This function
mirrors updates that are made to one volume to another volume. The volumes can be in the same
system or on two different systems. The used capacity for Global Mirror and Metro Mirror is
the sum of the capacities of all of the volumes that are in a Metro Mirror or Global Mirror
relationship. Both master and auxiliary volumes are counted.
- Data reduction pool licensing
- Customers with base licenses and full bundle licenses (if they have a valid
software maintenance agreement entitlement for upgrading to 8.1 or later) are entitled to the new data
reduction pools capabilities.
- The base license entitles the client to the following
functions: