Managing Microsoft Processor Core licenses
With version 10.0.12, BigFix Inventory supports new metrics for the per core physical licensing model. The calculation is done for both physical and virtual metric values.
Supported metric
| Metric | Parameters |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Windows Server Physical Processor Core (default metric for the products) |
|
| Microsoft Windows Server Virtual Processor Core |
|
| Microsoft Windows Server Standard Physical Processor Core (default metric for the products) |
|
 Microsoft SQL Server Physical
Processor Cores (default metric for the products) |
|
| Microsoft SQL Server Virtual Processor Cores |
|
-
The new discovered Microsoft products will have their default metric assigned according to the above table.
- Products discovered with confirmed bundling, or defined default custom bundling, or with default custom metric, will not be reassigned to new default metric after upgrading BigFix Inventory server.
Metric calculation
The metric calculation rules are explained below:
- Metric value is calculated only for the products that are part of the Contract.
- The calculated value is visible on "All Contracts" and "Product Metrics per Contract" panels.
Calculate Physical metric value for a product
The rules to calculate the physical metric value are explained below:
- Metric value for a product = sum of calculated values for each physical server (with licensed product installed or with the VM with a licensed product)
- Metric value for a server = number of server cores (minimum number of cores per physical processor and per physical computer applies)
For Windows Standard, there can be maximum two VMs with licensed product on a physical server. For each VMs exceeding the limit, metric value for a product is increased by server metric value.
| Metric | Parameters |
|---|---|
| Windows Server Microsoft Physical Processor Core |
|
| Windows Server Standard Microsoft Physical Processor Core |
|
| Microsoft SQL Server Physical Processor Cores |
|
Calculate Virtual metric value for a product:
- Metric value for a product = sum of calculated values for each virtual machine and each physical machine with licensed product installed.
- Metric value for a virtual machine = number of virtual cores, minimum number of cores per virtual machine applies.
- Metric value for a physical machine = number of physical cores,minimum number of cores per physical processor and per physical computer applies.
| Metric | Parameters |
|---|---|
| Windows Server Microsoft Virtual Processor Core |
|
| Microsoft SQL Server Virtual Processor Cores |
|
Additional SQL Server considerations
- You will have to manually manage a situation when there are VMs on a server with SQL Server Standard and you will classify them to be calculated per Physical Processor Core. This is required by Microsoft license terms for SQL Server Standard and BigFix Inventory does not handle this situation automatically. Normally customer should reassign such instances to Virtual Processor Core metric.
- If a mixture of MS SQL / Windows Server editions is running on a hardware computer, license utilization will be calculated independently for each product (as defined in Software Catalog) and the license calculation mechanism will not try to choose automatically a higher edition to optimize license cost. A customer will need to classify Microsoft software accordingly.
- A customer will have to manually manage the situation when the Windows Server Standard virtualization host is used for other purposes than virtualization. In such cases, manual metric calculation will be required according to Microsoft license terms.
Examples
Below is an example of physical core metric calculation. On the Software Classification screenshot there is software and capacity data that was used for calculation examples. An appropriate contract including given Software Product and Metric has to exist.
Below are the calculation examples based on the formula and default calculation parameters in reference to data from above screenshot.
Max(Server Cores, Server Active Sockets x 8 (min cores per processor), 16 (min cores per physical computer))
1 – Max (2, 8 x 1, 16) = 16
2 – Max (64, 8 x 32, 16) * ceil( 7 / 2) = 256 * 4 = 1024
3 – Max (8, 8 x 1, 16) * 3 = 48
Total: 16 + 1024 + 48 = 1088The result is present on All Contracts panel.
Below is an example of virtual core metric calculation. On the Software Classification screenshot there is software and capacity data that was used for calculation examples. An appropriate contract including given Software Product and Metric has to exist.
Below are the calculation examples based on the formula and default calculation parameters in reference to data from above screenshot.
Max(Logical Processors, 8 (min cores per virtual computer))
1 – Max (4, 8) * 7 = 56
Max(Server Cores, Server Active Sockets x 8 (min cores per processor), 16 (min cores per physical computer))
2 – Max (8, 8 x 1, 16) * 3 = 48
Total: 56 + 48 = 104The result is present on All Contracts panel.
