DSXchange

Can someone explain exactly how the current Server CPU licensing model works? My current company is licensed for 8 CPUs. Right now it is running on a 6 CPU box and was running on an 8 CPU box in the past. All is well and good up to this point.

Now, in the very near future the server will be upgraded and replaced with a 16 - 20 CPU server. I've heard a couple of different answers as to what happens and I'm wondering what the truth is:

1) DataStage doesn't exceed the 8 CPU limit.
2) DataStage notices the fact that you have more CPUs than you are licensed for and starts logging Warnings in all jobs.
3) Something else happens. Or doesn't happen.

I don't have any way to test this out and I'd really rather not wait for the Production server upgrade to find out what's going to happen. Anybody with some Real World experience with this out there?

Some sales dude from Ascential shows up to sell you more licenses?

Yah, sorta forgot about that option.

So, nobody out there yet has any experience with this... Ken? Vince? Anyone? Bueller?

When I was last in India we were running an eight CPU licence on a 32 CPU SunFire server. DataStage (v6.x) never ran on more than eight CPUs even though we ran ten and twelve jobs simultaneously.

However, I can't be certain that this was managed by DataStage or by UNIX (affinity) configuration. For example another eight CPUs were allocated to Oracle, and twelve to SAP BW.

I could, since we departed more than amicably, ask. Alternatively, Mukund, if you're still on this list, do you know the answer already?

In case anyone cares what the answer is to this, this is (paraphrased) from Ascential Support. Note that this apparently applies to the 7.x release specifically, the 6.x release was meant to work this way but apparently... doesn't.

You cannot install DataStage on a server with more CPUs than you are licensed for. Period. Less - yes, more - no.

If you upgrade an existing server to have more CPUs than you are licensed for - no jobs will run. The 'warning' I heard about that gets logged is just that - something to the effect that you have exceeded your CPU count and the job shuts down without running.

Fun stuff, but at least now I know what I'm up against and can guide the people planning this upgrade appropriately.

Interesting. Through IBM was ordered (for my current client - before I arrived) a 2-CPU DataStage licence for a 4-CPU AIX machine.

Has it been installed yet and is this a 7.x version?

No, they got the delivery wrong and delivered a 14-CPU authorization code. Which has been installed successfully.

Hi,

We have installed DS 7.1 at a customer's site, on Windows 2003 Server.
Because it has 4 Xeon CPUs (with Hyper-Threading) they turned into 8 logical CPUs.
During installation a warning was issued because it detected 8 CPUs, in spite of existing only 4 physical CPUs.
Then, the customer disabled the H-T and we installed DS. So, I do not know if DS cancels jobs (on the run )

I have raised this issue with Ascential and I am waiting for an answer. I suppose this is a tricky situation because the customer cannot get the power of H-T.

Cheers,
Henrique

A quick followup on this topic as I've gotten to a point where I need to install DataStage on a server with too many CPUs on it.

Turns out DataStage will install, but you do get a Warning during the installation process that you have exceeded the license count. Everything is running rather nicely - with one big however.

HOWEVER - when every job is started it logs a Warning stating:


I need to see about getting some CPUs shifted to another node.