Keep in mind that the user counts at this point are for CONCURRENT users
(this was changed a few months after the initial announcements, sometime
just after this spring's Common). The best IBM documented explanation i've
seen of the way the system counts the profiles and the validity of that
count is from the book "i5/OS and Related Software Maintaining and Managing
i5/OS and Related Software".
Excerpt:
A user profile is an object on the system with a unique name that contains
the user password, the list of special authorities assigned to a user, and
the objects the user owns. The WRKLICINF command is a tool that you can use
to track the number of user profiles that are on the system and to help you
maintain compliance with the i5/OS licensing by user that System i 9407-515
and 9406-525 offer. Select option 5 Maintaining and managing i5/OS and
related software 67 to display the profiles in the Usage Count Information
field. To aid in meeting license compliance, this usage count can be
checked against the number of user entitlements that are available on the
system. If a user profile is created and enabled when the usage count on
the system exceeds the number of user entitlements for the system, a
message that states the noncompliance is sent. There might be situations
where it is valid to have a number of enabled profiles greater than the
number of user entitlements. For example, you might have a large number of
users who are not on the system concurrently. IBM intends to eliminate
IBM-supplied system profiles from the usage count, which will allow you to
see a true usage count of your system.
In my book, you can see that the i5/OS code that is doing the count of
licenses/users on the system was probably written around the 'original'
design of the user based licensing and has no useful concept of the key
concept of concurrent usage. The way the count shows on the WRKLICINF
screen at this point is of no help to many shops who have various shifts of
users or other similar patterns of system usage. To me, that's a pretty
glaring deficiency in a tool that's designed to aid in compliance with user
based licensing (hopefully we'll see a redesign of the counts).
For example, with the current method displayed on WRKLICINF: the 200
profiles on a given system with a license for 40 users are enabled in order
to allow the system's users to log on as needed, but only 30 or so users
are logged on concurrently at any given time. The WRKLICINF will show
something like a Usage Limit of 40, a Usage Count of 200, and a Peak Usage
count of 200. The Usage Count should be redesigned to reflect the current
users who are signed on concurrently (~30), and the Peak Usage should be
redesigned to reflect the highest number of users who have been signed on
concurrently to date (say 36).
Pat Barber
<mboceanside@worl
dnet.att.net> To
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cc
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Please respond to
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<midrange-l@midra
nge.com>
IBM is also not clear on this subject. I just went through a fairly long
discussion with
the support folks on this very subject. The final statement in the
conversation was
something like this: "So... A user is anybody who has a profile ??? ...
IBM responds...."Yes".
I can tell you my customer with a 525 starting getting these messages on
day one.
He has "around" 30 users, we bought 30 users. When I loaded the profiles, I
ended up with around 55 profiles including 20 who no longer worked for the
company and had been disabled.
Until I deleted those folks, my "user" count in the wrklicinf showed 50
users.
It also takes a few minutes for the user count to readjust.
Multiple sessions by same person do not "appear" to change the count.
Your mileage could vary....
Jon S wrote:
I have a customer who is looking at buying a new i515 and we are fuzzy on
what the definition of a user is. I can't find any info on IBM's website
and
I want the make sure the salesman is telling us correctly, that a user
profile can sign on to multiple session and it still only counts as one.
Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.
Jon
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