Determining Available Capacity for OpenShift Container Platform & IBM Cloud Paks through Subscription Watch

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Overview:

Subscription Watch for OpenShift Container Platform helps customers monitor the consumption of their OpenShift entitlements in aggregate within their Red Hat account. Information about the number of cores being utilized is collected from each OpenShift Container Platform cluster through either the OpenShift telemetry service or through manual input to OpenShift Cluster Manager at cloud.redhat.com. This information is then summarized in Subscription Watch.

Current State:

A customer is not able to definitively determine the remaining available capacity of OpenShift Container Platform cores in their account via Subscription Watch, in two specific situations:

  1. A customer has restricted OpenShift entitlements obtained through the purchase of one or more IBM Cloud Paks AND unrestricted OpenShift entitlements obtained through the purchase of a Red Hat subscription or IBM Cloud Pak for Applications.

  2. A customer has purchased more than one type of IBM Cloud Pak that includes restricted use entitlements of OpenShift Container Platform.

This is due to three underlying factors:

  1. All IBM Cloud Paks except for IBM Cloud Pak for Applications include OpenShift Container Platform entitlements that can only be used to run software distributed as part of their respective Cloud Pak, and may not be used to run any other customer or third-party ISV workload.

  2. The number of cores from each worker node in a cluster are added together (regardless of the entitlement utilized) before being reported to OpenShift Cluster Manager through the upload of telemetry data. The aggregate sum of cores does not represent the contractual restrictions of entitlements assigned to a cluster.

  3. Subscription Watch does not break down the OpenShift Container Platform core threshold by specific subscription products. Since subscriptions for OpenShift Container Platform and all IBM Cloud Paks (except IBM Cloud Pak for Applications) are not contractually interchangeable, a customer can not determine available capacity for subscriptions of varying types.

Note: If a customer only has obtained unrestricted OpenShift entitlements from the purchase of Red Hat subscriptions or IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, Subscription Watch can be used to determine the remaining available capacity of cores without following the instructions in this article.

Proposed Solution:

IBM provides the IBM License Service which is included in all IBM Cloud Paks. IBM License Service collects and measures the license usage of IBM Cloud Paks at the cluster level. Cloud Pak customers can use IBM License Service and the Red Hat Customer Portal to manually calculate the available capacity of both restricted use and unrestricted use entitlements of OpenShift Container Platform and IBM Cloud Paks.

Here are the steps to manually determine available capacity for each type of subscription:

  1. Use IBM License Service to determine the number of restricted use cores used by each Cloud Pak present in a cluster or IBM License Service Reporter across multiple clusters.

    • For IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, Cloud Pak for Data, and Cloud Pak for Integration information is returned for the Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric. Please consult the IBM License Information document for the IBM Cloud Pak for the correct conversion rate for VPC to OpenShift Container Platform cores.
    • For IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management and IBM Cloud Pak for Security, information is returned for the Managed Virtual System (MVS) metric. Please consult the IBM License Information document for the IBM Cloud Pak for the correct conversion rate for MVS to OpenShift Container Platform cores.

    Instructions on how to use IBM License Service to obtain the number of cores used by each Cloud Pak is beyond the scope of this article. More information can be found in the individual IBM Cloud Pak documentation.

  2. Repeat step 1 for all clusters in a specific Red Hat account. Keep an independent running sum of cores for each IBM Cloud Pak that includes restricted use cores.

  3. Using the Red Hat Customer Portal, determine the total number of entitled restricted use cores of OpenShift Container Platform for each IBM Cloud Pak that are in the customer account. This information can be found under the OpenShift heading on the Overview page.

  4. A customer can now determine the available capacity of restricted OpenShift Container Platform cores for a specific IBM Cloud Pak within the customer account.

    The formula for determining the available capacity of restricted OpenShift Container Platform cores for each Cloud Pak (denoted by restricted_cp_avail) is:

    restricted_cp_avail = restricted_cp_in_account - restricted_cp_in_use

    where:

    • restricted_cp_in_account is the total amount of entitled restricted use cores for OpenShift Container Platform for a given IBM Cloud Pak as determined in step 3 above
    • restricted_cp_in_use is the sum of all deployed restricted use cores of OpenShift Container Platform for a given IBM Cloud Pak as determined in step 2 above

  5. Returning to Subscription Watch, a customer can now determine the available capacity of unrestricted OpenShift Container Platform cores for the customer account.

The formula for determining available capacity of unrestricted OpenShift Container Platform cores (denoted by available) is:

available = (threshold - restricted_in_account) - (utilized - restricted_in_use)

where:

  • threshold is the aggregate subscription threshold reported for OpenShift Container Platform in Subscription Watch
  • utilized is the aggregate quantity of utilized cores reported for OpenShift Container Platform in Subscription Watch
  • restricted_in_account is the aggregate sum of all restricted use cores of IBM Cloud Paks across the entire Red Hat customer account (note: this should not include cores from IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, as these cores are not restricted)
  • restricted_in_use is the aggregate sum of all deployed restricted use cores of IBM Cloud Paks as reported by IBM License Service (note: this should not include cores from IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, as these cores are not restricted)

Caveats:

  1. Not all IBM Cloud Paks are currently fully enabled to work with the IBM License Service. Please consult with your IBM representative or IBM Support to determine if the IBM Cloud Pak version in use is fully enabled with IBM License Service.
  2. If the IBM Cloud Pak entitlements were issued through an IBM Unlimited License Agreement (IULA) or an IBM catalog Enterprise License Agreement (ELA), the quantity of IBM Cloud Pak entitlements displayed in the Red Hat Customer Portal may be inaccurate. Please contact your IBM representative for assistance in validating the quantity displayed.

Forward Looking Statements:

Enhancements to relevant Red Hat services (including Subscription Watch, OpenShift Cluster Manager, and OpenShift Telemetry) to simplify this process may be delivered in the future. IBM is also planning enhancements to the IBM License Service and full enablement of all Cloud Paks to simplify the license usage counting process.

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