We are converting our license from tier to task

rdierk · Post by **rdierk** » 11 Mar 2008 1:17

What are the benefits of task over tier licensing? It would appear that task would be more expensive way to operate snce each job gets chanrged multiple times. Any insight would be appreciated.

richardoku · Post by **richardoku** » 11 Mar 2008 4:37

Guess your account manager can tell the exact details on task versus tier...

To try to help a bit, please consider the following. Tier based can be the best choice when the number of machines (and their machine classification) is stable. And this capacity is enough to continue processing current and future batch loads.

Task based on the other hand gives flexibility in the number of machines to deploy for batch processing. Adding more machines (agents and possibly the included Control-Modules) does not cost more (versus Tier based). Only the possible growth in the number of tasks can impact the costs. Still additional tasks can be bought in increments of 100 per unit, which enables easy extension with a good view on (planned) cost.

Further a task is only counted once a day despite the number of executions. e.g. a Cyclic job running every minute is not counted as 1440 tasks a day but only as 1!

Hope this helps?

rdierk · Post by **rdierk** » 11 Mar 2008 6:34

Tasks are counted per day wether they execute or not. This means that task that use timezones, processing that begins just prior to NDP and developemnt jobs that might be ordered in but never executed, all count at least once toward your task based license.

I understand that the task based allows more flexibilty with agent deployment, but I am not certain it outweighs the portential raisk of having to pay significant licensing fees if extra jobs are orederd in. For example, if processing is delayed and signifcantly carries over to the next day, you could potential go over the task limit and requie the purchase of thousands of extra tasks that might never be used again.

richardoku · Post by **richardoku** » 17 Mar 2008 10:28

Hi rdierk,

Think that it is ok that jobs loaded to Control-M are at least counted as 1 task. If a job is not needed to be on the plan then why scheduling it?

Further, but this could depend on the contract, i don't think that jobs which are delayed are counted again as a task. To my opinion; any delay of a job already ordered to Control-M should not be counted again for the next day. Please check this with your account manager.

Advantage of tasks is primarily that you pay for the actual usage, maybe easier to plan budget and/or charge back to, if any, actual users of your Control-M environment. Maybe you want to make a split between development and production usage?

And that you can deploy as many agents as you need, without paying additional tier-based licenses.

Hope this supports your decision?
Greetings

rdierk · Post by **rdierk** » 23 Mar 2008 2:24

The BMC definition of a task is the number of unique jobs defined in the AJF at the time of NDP. If a scheduling table comes into the AJF an hour before NDP and only 10% of the jobs run prior to NDP and the others run after NDP, the 90% will be counted twice.

The same holds true for jobs scheduled in a time zone. By definition they need to use a special user daily that brings them in with the next days ODATE. These will laso be counted at least twice.

I agree that it depends on the environment, if you ar running 50,000 jobs on 50 agents, tier is certainly more practical. We are somewhere in between and I am trying to determine what is the best course for our licensing in the future.

BMC seems to favor task based licensing.