BMC Discovery Licensing entitlement

Storage licensing

Storage discovery is a separately licensed add on.  It uses the same unit of measure as the base BMC Discovery licensed product and must have a matching one to one license count with the base license. BMC Discovery for Storage consists of regularly updated downloadable patterns in a similar way to an extended data pack or TKU. For information on purchasing licenses for storage discovery, contact your BMC Account Manager.

Cloud discovery licensing

Cloud discovery is separately licensed. It is built into the core of BMC Discovery, so rather than an add on, it is a feature that you choose to enable. When you enable it, cloud licensing is charged for each managed asset–cloud resource on the following basis:

"A license is required for the highest monthly average of Cloud Resources monitored, managed (directly or indirectly), or discovered by the Product(s). A “Cloud Resource” is any instance of a cloud infrastructure that provides a service for other Cloud Resources, Computers or Users connected to it. For example, a Cloud Resource may include compute, network, storage or platform services that run in private or public clouds."

The following list shows examples of the type of service that will consume a cloud license. Not all are currently supported, though may be as cloud providers are added with future TKU releases:

• Application Hosting–for example, Azure Cloud Services, Azure Websites and Apps, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, Google App Engine
• Containers as a Service–for example, Docker VM Extension, EC2 Container Service, Google Container Engine
• Scaling Options–for example, Azure Autoscale, AWS Auto Scaling, Google Autoscaler
• Database as a Service–for example, Azure SQL DB, AWS RDS, Google Cloud SQL, Azure DocumentDB, AWS Dynamo DB, Cloud Bigtable
• Analytics Options–for example, HDInsight, Elastic MapReduce, Google Cloud Dataproc
• Caching–for example, Azure Managed Cache, Amazon Elastic Cache
• Cloud hosts/VMs

See the Supported Cloud Providers pages for information on what is currently supported.

Cloud licensing FAQs

• Q – When a cloud host is discovered, does it count as a host or cloud resource?
• A – A VM in the cloud which is associated with a scanned host incurs a single cloud license. The scanned host does not incur a cloud license or a data center license.
• Q – When a cloud VM is discovered, but its host is not scanned, does it count a cloud resource?
• A – A virtual machine in the cloud incurs a single cloud license whether or not the host it runs on is scanned.
• Q – When an on-premises VM is discovered, does it count as a license?
• A – No, an on-premises VM does not count towards a cloud resource license

How can I tell what is consuming cloud licenses in real-time?

A cloud license is consumed for the following:

• A software instance (SI) node representing an item of software running in the cloud.

  • The following query shows software instance (SI) nodes that represent an item of software running in the cloud. These SIs each consume a cloud license. This query is used on the licensing page and the licensing reports that you can access from that page.

    search SoftwareInstance where cloud

• A virtual machine (VM) node representing a discovered virtual machine running in the cloud

  • The following query shows VM nodes that represent a discovered virtual machine running in the cloud. These VM nodes each consume a cloud license. This query is used on the licensing page and the licensing reports that you can access from that page.


    search VirtualMachine where cloud

How can I tell what is consuming host licenses in real-time?

Host licenses are only consumed for server OSIs. Host licenses are not consumed for virtual hosts running in the cloud, or for any physical host you discover that forms part of the cloud infrastructure. Host licenses are still not consumed for desktop hosts.

The following query shows host nodes that are not desktop hosts, and are not part of the cloud. The resulting host nodes each consume a host license. This query is used on the licensing page and the licensing reports that you can access from that page.

search Host where not (host_type has subword 'desktop' or host_type has subword 'client') and not (cloud and nodecount(traverse ContainedHost:HostContainment:HostContainer:VirtualMachine where cloud))

The new license report shows I am using fewer host licenses than the old report, which is correct?

Q – In previous versions of BMC Discovery, I ran the BMC Discovery License Audit report to provide numbers for licensing. In BMC Discovery 11.2, the new Licensing page shows that I am now consuming far fewer host licenses. Is this correct?

A – Licensing is based on the lifetime of a Host averaged over a month. Initially the Host has been present for just a few days, so when averaged over the entire month, the total is low. After a complete month, the number will have increased, and be the same as the Host count.

Discovery for z/OS licensing

Discovery for z/OS is a separately licensed add on. When licensed, it provides details of z Systems running the z/OS operating system which feed into the BMC Discovery product. This includes information about the z System itself, the z/OS LPARs and the sub-systems running on the LPARs. For customers also running BMC MainView, BMC Discovery can also provide additional details about transactions and databases.

Discovery for z/OS is licensed based on the MIPS capacity of the z/OS environments being discovered.

Mainframe observed communications

From version 22.2, BMC Discovery supports the discovery and modeling of observed communication from mainframe computers.

The feature name is Mainframe Connection Linking, and is separately licensed and enabled.