Frequently Asked Questions - License Usage by Capacity

FAQ

Comparing the License Types (Traditional Vs. Capacity)

The capacity based licensing scores over Traditional Agent based licensing as it provides more flexibility by allowing you to focus on how to best protect your data regardless of client or agent used and where the data is stored (deduplication, tape drives, etc).

The following table compares the two licensing models and describes the benefits of the capacity based licensing program:

Traditional Agent Based Licensing	Capacity Based Licensing
Modular Components Contains modular components licensed by client, agent, and back-end storage policy capacity or feature enablers. Hence, requiring to purchase each component individually.	Consolidated Components allows data protection and archiving of capacity purchased by using this license. Allows you to consolidate and simplify the licensing needs.
Dependent Licensing Licensing is dependent on agent types, client quantities and copy store pools (deduplication, tape drives, etc). Exact number of license needs to be purchased to meet individual deployment and configuration needs.	Freedom to configure as per Needs Each Capacity Based License includes a wide variety of supported agents and features, and no physical limits are imposed on the quantity of clients used or the number of copies managed.
Bundled Licenses are available for advanced solutions that need a combination of agents and options to be configured. This requires purchasing the exact license bundles to make the advanced solutions workable.	Single Capacity License The Data Protection Enterprise and the Data Archive Enterprise class of Capacity Based License offer the full feature set of Calypso to fit your configuration needs, and gives you the flexibility to change it at any time.
Platform Dependency Changes in platforms may require changes to the CommCell license key. The existing license types may need to be swapped or new license needs to be purchased if the platforms are changed.	Platform Independence The unlimited client options encoded in the Capacity Based License allows redeploying new agents without the need to change the license key.
More number of Licenses required Back-end capacity licensing can become expensive as multiple copies are deployed in the Storage Policy. For example, an active deduplicated recovery copy and secondary deduplicated DASH copy that are recovering the same data will use double deduplication store licensing requirements.	Front End Capacity Size is counted The license measurement is keyed to the Front-end capacity size. Front-end capacity allows unlimited quantities of secondary copies (deduplicated recovery copies, etc.) and eliminates licensing costs on the managed data sets.
Complicated Structure Additional clients, additional back-end/storage policy capacity (such as Advanced Deduplication Option Store capacity, or Tape Drives) or other advanced options might be required when the as the environment and setup grows. This can be more complicated depending on the desired configuration.	Simplified Approach As and when the amount of Front-end capacity is consumed fully, the extra license capacity can be purchased to satisfy the required demand. This can be done without the need to change the license type, just an additional capacity may be purchased.

How is my Data calculated?

Backup jobs are calculated by determining the last FULL or SYNTHETIC FULL job for each client. The jobs are counted once regardless of which copy and how many copies they exist in.
Archive jobs are calculated by determining the total quantity of all active archive jobs run in the CommCell.

How much Data Growth should I anticipate?

Surveys of numerous customer sites reveal production data increases incrementally at an annual rate of 20 to 30 percent. When the available free capacity nears zero (or the capacity reached is almost 100% of the allocated capacity) it would become necessary to purchase additional capacity to satisfy the needs.

If the size of data increases over time due to new data growth, then the size of the protection jobs and the measured usage increases at a similar rate. However, if data is deleted or filters are used to constrain the amount of data protected, then usage measurement will decline over time.

Does a SnapProtect job Without Backup Copy count towards Capacity usage?

Front End Data is defined as the application size of the last FULL backup job per active subclient policy. In case of SnapCopy it is not counted, this is because there is no actual size recorded on the application size of the SnapCopy job. However, when the snap is mounted and a backup copy is created then only the application size is calculated and therefore the job gets counted against capacity usage.

How often is the capacity usage graph refreshed?

The Capacity Usage graph gets refreshed as follows:

Every 24-hours, or
Whenever the CommServe services are restarted, or
After a Data Aging job is run

What do I do When available capacity is reached?

If you have reached the available capacity you can do the following:

Use the Reset button available in the License Administration dialog box to reactivate the system for 72 hours.
The Reset button can be used once every 72 hours for a total of 10 times.

This gives you 30 days to obtain and increase your capacity.

After the 10th time, the system will be disabled – preventing new backup or archive jobs.

Restore jobs and administration jobs will continue to function normally.
Contact your software provider and purchase additional license capacity.
You will receive a new license file.

Apply the new license to reset the available capacity.
You can also use selective deletion of jobs from the Storage Policy (any archive job or the largest backup job) and run a data aging operation.
If these deletions and data aging jobs drop the capacity consumption below 110% level on all the classes, the over capacity condition will be reset for the CommCell and all jobs will resume. This will also reset the grace period counter to 0, the reset button will not be available if you reach below 110% of the total used capacity after the data aging jobs are run.

Why is the Reset button not available?

The Reset button is not available if the following conditions are met:

Reset button has been used to increase the capacity for a total number of 10 times.
Data Aging jobs have run to bring down the capacity of the system below 110% of total used capacity.

How do I exclude unnecessary backups from being counted against the capacity usage calculation?

To exclude backups from being counted against the capacity usage calculation, disable the client activities at the subclient level.

What would I see if the Capacity is exceeded?

The system generates the event message displayed on the right as follows:

When the usage exceeds 85%. All jobs will continue to run.
When the usage exceeds 110%. All jobs will go into a waiting state and Reset button will be available.

Whenever jobs are run after the usage exceeds 110% and no more Resets are there, all jobs will remain in the pending state.

How do I use this license if I have upgraded from a previous version?

There are two ways to use capacity based licensing:

If you already have Capacity based License, contact your software provider and obtain new licenses.
If you do not have capacity based license, contact your software provider to obtain and apply new licenses as described in Obtaining and Applying the License.