What benefits does Red Hat Ansible Automation bring to organisations using IBM Software?

The benefits of IBM Software are too many to mention, but it can also be expensive, and difficult to track and maintain. Cloud and complexity make controlling your IBM Software infrastructure even harder.

IBM’s Licence Metric Tool (ILMT) is intended to help organisations manage their IBM Software licensing requirements, and help them maintain an audit ready posture. In fact, ILMT must be installed, configured and maintained in order for organisations running any IBM software in a virtualised environment to achieve, and maintain, compliance with their IBM Passport Advantage license agreement.

However, whilst most users manage to install ILMT, configuring it correctly can be difficult and much can go wrong. Common issues include:

• ILMT data collection failures
• ILMT application not working
• Broken connections to Hypervisor
• Software classification errors

If you get it wrong, and your organisation is audited, you may be looking at a hefty fine or unplanned software purchase.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can help...

Concurrent use of ILMT & Ansible Automation makes IBM Software compliance easy!

ILMT is agent-based; so, should ILMT agents be installed on every server in your infrastructure? Or, just on the servers you think are running IBM Software? The first option is expensive, and the second rather risky.

In contrast to ILMT, Ansible Automation Platform is an agentless solution, i.e., it only needs to be installed once, and communicates with all other machines via the software already installed on them.

Hence with Ansible Automation Platform, IBM software users could install it just once and easily check where IBM software is installed in their entire IT infrastructure. Any IBM software found running on a virtual server without a corresponding ILMT agent can be triaged with administrators informed accordingly. Automated remedial action is then undertaken by Ansible Automation Platform; either the ILMT agent is installed, or the IBM Software is removed from the affected virtual server, hence returning the customer to a state of compliance with their IBM Software entitlements.

Benefits include:

As an accredited Red Hat and IBM Partner with over 20 years’ experience of delivering enterprise automation solutions, and a subject matter expert in software licensing and subscriptions, Elyzium is well placed to help you on your Red Hat Ansible journey.

To understand further the business case for using Ansible Automation with ILMT to manage your software licensing compliance, please take a look at Elyzium's Insight Guide "What benefits does Red Hat Ansible Automation bring to organisations using IBM Software?"

If you would like any further information, or would like to discuss the benefits specific to your business, please contact us to arrange a call back with an automation specialist.