Understanding the CMC subscription for Power Systems

To effectively manage your IBM Cloud Management Console connections and subscriptions, it is important to know the difference between activating a new CMC connection, purchasing subscriptions, and renewing subscriptions. Renewing subscriptions is the same as purchasing these subscriptions again. In CMC documentation, the terms renew and purchase are used interchangeably, and indicate that you need to purchase the subscription.

Activating a new CMC connection

When you purchase a CMC subscription for the first time, you need to activate a CMC portal by completing and submitting the CMC activation form. Generally, CMC portal activation is done only once per customer. Later, whenever you purchase new system subscriptions or renew existing ones, you do not need to do any additional activities; they automatically entitle your CMC to manage your systems.

Relating the systems connected to CMC to the subscription

There is no direct mapping between the systems that are connected to CMC and the subscriptions that you purchase. For example, if you purchase a CMC subscription along with a system that has 16 sockets, you have a subscription for 16 sockets. You can either connect one system with 16 sockets, or say, eight systems with 2 sockets each, keeping the total sockets at 16. Thus, you can connect any combination of systems as long as the total number of system sockets does not exceed the total number of subscribed sockets.

Managing your CMC subscription

The subscription for IBM Cloud Management Console is activated per system and is based on the number of sockets that are associated with each system. The validity of your subscription is tracked against the number of sockets only and is not tracked against systems.

Your subscription is validated by comparing the number of sockets of the systems that are connected to CMC with the number of sockets for which the subscription is active across your legal enterprise.

All CMC subscription and base resource data comes from IBM Entitled Systems Support. You can get information about your CMC subscription and sockets either via an email notification from CMC, by downloading the ESS report, or by opening the Subscription tab on your CMC portal.

Email notification

If the number of sockets that are listed in the CMC inventory exceeds the number of sockets listed in ESS for your legal enterprise, you will receive an email. This email describes the details of your CMC subscription and the sockets.

ESS report
You can get a more detailed CMC subscription and socket breakdown by downloading a report on ESS called "Cloud Management Console - subscription vs physical sockets". To download this report, specify any customer number that is associated with your legal enterprise.

The data that is included in this report is independent of the customer number that you specify and includes the information for the entire enterprise. For example, the number of sockets listed in the report are the sockets for the entire enterprise, and not just for the customer number that you specified for downloading the report. The ESS report also lists the sockets that are in error. To fix these socket errors, work with ESS support.

Important: The ESS API CMC uses excludes the sockets that are in the error state. Hence, sometimes your ESS report shows more sockets than the number of sockets that are listed in the notification email from CMC or displayed on the CMC Subscription tab.

Subscription tab

The Subscription tab in the CMC Inventory app provides information, such as the number of sockets that each system has, the expiration date for the purchased subscriptions, and a summary of the number of sockets that are connected to the portal. For more information about this tab, see CMC Subscription.

Example

The following table provides details of the active CMC subscriptions for the connected systems in France.

Row No.	Subscription details	ISO	Number of sockets	Subscription period	Date of purchase
1	CMC subscription was purchased along with the systems.	FR	10	01-Jan-2022 to 31-Dec-2022	01-Jan-2022
2		FR	10	01-Jul-2022 to 30-Jun-2023	01-Jul-2022
3		FR	25	01-Nov-2021 to 31 Oct 2022	01-Nov-2021
4	Renewed subscription	FR	10	01-Jan-2023 to 31-Dec-2023	25-Dec-2022

For this ISO, 45 total sockets are associated with the systems listed in rows 1 to 3. Each system was purchased at a different time, and hence the validity of each system’s associated sockets is different.

Case 1: The subscription for the systems is validated on 01-Aug-2022.

The total number of sockets for the connected systems is 45. The subscription is active for 45 sockets that are listed in rows 1 to 3. So, there is no need of a reminder.

Case 2: The subscription for the systems is validated on 01-Oct-2022.

The total number of sockets for the connected systems is 45. The subscription is active for 45 sockets that are listed in rows 1 to 3, but the subscription for 25 sockets in row 3 is about to expire in 30 days. You will be reminded via email to renew your subscription for 25 sockets. You must renew the subscription before it expires.

Case 3: The subscription for the systems is validated on 01-Dec-2022.

The total number of sockets for the connected systems is 45. The subscription is active for 20 sockets that are listed in rows 1 and 2. The subscription for 10 sockets in row 1 is about to expire in 30 days and the subscription has already expired for 25 sockets in row 3. You will be reminded via email to renew your subscription for 35 sockets. You must renew the subscription immediately for 25 sockets and for 10 sockets before it expires.

Case 4: The subscription for the systems is validated on 26-Dec-2022.

The total number of sockets for the connected systems is 45. The subscription was renewed for 10 sockets. These sockets are listed in row 4. While validating the subscription, the entry in row 1 is excluded because those sockets were renewed and listed in row 4. The subscription is active for 20 sockets that are listed in rows 2 and 4. The subscription has expired for 25 sockets in row 3. You will be reminded via email to renew your subscription for 25 sockets. You must immediately renew the subscription.

Important: While validating the subscription, the systems and their associated sockets are combined per
country, and then the subscription is validated.

Email notification

If you receive an email with the subject “CMC Socket Subscription Renewal Reminder”, it means that subscription for some sockets of the systems that are connected to CMC has either expired or is about to expire.

Notification email template

The notification email contains two tables:

1. The first table lists the number of sockets that have expired or are about to expire and their expiration date.
2. The second table provides the MTMS of the systems connected to CMC and the sockets associated with the systems.

The S/N column specifies only the row number for each table. The S/N columns of both tables are not related to each other.

Note: You can renew the subscription for the sockets, not for the systems.

In the Notification email template image, 14 Power Systems in CMC inventory are listed. These 14 systems contain 32 sockets. The subscription is active for only 8 sockets. There are multiple ways to solve the issue:

• Purchase the CMC subscription for 24 sockets.
• For systems that are not in a Power Enterprise Pool 2.0, you can use one of 2 options:
  • Move a combination of systems, whose sockets add up to 24, to a different HMC that is not connected to CMC. For example, you can move all the systems from S/N 1 to S/N 10, or you can move all the systems except S/N 1, 2, and 4.
  • Add a combination of systems, whose sockets add up to 24, to the CMC blocklist. For example, you can add all the systems except S/N 4 and S/N 8, or you can add all the systems except S/N 1, 2, and 4. For information about blocking these systems, see Cloud Connector settings.

The email is sent to the email address of the CMC primary administrator. This is the same email address that you specified in the CMC activation form.

• The notification email is sent 30 days, 14 days, 7 days, 1 day before, and on the day that your subscription expires. 
• If you do not renew the subscription, after the expiration date a reminder email will be sent every 10 days.

The CMC application dashboard also starts displaying an alert message 14 days before the subscription is due to expire.

To renew your CMC subscription, contact your IBM Partner or IBM Power sales representative and request that they place an order for the required subscription term.