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Hello,
I would like to provide some feedback regarding the way SCU consumption is calculated when IBM Storage Virtualize systems use backend storage based on FCM drives.
Today, SVC calculates SCU consumption based on the capacity of the mdisks presented by the backend storage. However, in FCM environments, licensing is typically calculated on the effective TiB purchased for the DRAID and mdiskgrp created on the storage system, before any space-saving technologies such as deduplication and compression are applied.
This creates a discrepancy because SVC appears to calculate SCU requirements based on the capacity exposed through the virtualized volumes, while the licensed capacity is derived from the backend storage allocation model. As a result, customers may appear to be consuming more SCUs than licensed, even when they have correctly purchased the required licenses.
From a commercial perspective, this can create confusion and potentially undermine customer confidence, because the GUI reports a licensing situation that does not reflect the actual entitlement purchased.
It might be worth considering whether SVC could automatically determine the correct licensed capacity by retrieving the relevant information directly from the backend storage system (for example through management APIs or internal communication mechanisms).
Alternatively, for storage tiers that leverage FCM deduplication and compression technologies, it could be useful to provide a manual SCU override mechanism. For example:
allow administrators to manually specify the licensed capacity associated with a specific tier (e.g. Flash Tier 0);
require an explicit confirmation flag acknowledging that the entered value corresponds to the actual licensed entitlement purchased by the customer;
use this declared value for SCU compliance reporting instead of relying exclusively on mdisk-derived calculations.
This would better align the reporting shown by SVC with the licensing model used for FCM-based solutions and would help avoid unnecessary concerns during customer audits and capacity reviews.
Best regards,
Gabriella Teruggi