DSXchange

We have a GRID Cluster of 3 VM's on 11.5 where we have DS installed and all jobs are running on Compute nodes and also Quality stage but QS jobs running only on HEAD NODE with APT GRID JOB ENABLE=NO. Technically i am not use QS in the complete cluster do i have pay license of QS for the complete cluster or just for the Head node.

Technically you COULD (that is, you have the capability to) execute your QualityStage jobs across all nodes in the grid/cluster. That's what governs your licensing liability.

Technicall we could but we are not how do we get with IBM on this I see this as a product limitation as it doesn't allow me to disable QS in grid compute nodes while I have it on Head node

I am pretty sure that if you got audited by IBM you would be found to be in breach of your license and they would stick you with a sizable bill for back payment of QualityStage licenses at list cost price for every year you had it installed. This could be tens of millions of dollars.

You have VMs which means you fall under sub capacity licensing. You are supposed to license DS and QS for every processing core on the physical machines that those VMs reside on unless you have ILMT running and monitoring those environments. ILMT/licensing does not care if you are running any QS or DS jobs - it will report the PVUs/CPUs on which DS and QS was installed and switched on and require a license for each.

So without ILMT running you are in breach of sub capacity licensing - you will be billed for DS and QS licenses for every processing core on the physical machine the VMs reside on and this could be tens of millions of dollars. With ILMT running you will be in breach for those VMs where QS is installed and running even if no QS jobs have ever executed on those nodes and this could be millions of dollars.

Remember IBM charges full licensing for a working environment regardless of whether or not you have any jobs running. A hot standby requires full production licensing even if it is mostly idle. Your DS/QS VMs each represent a running environment. You would need to setup those DS VMs to only have a DS engine installed and not QS and have ILMT confirming this. I'm not even sure you can mix and match a grid to have a combination of a DS/QS head node and DS child nodes.

I think it is safest to haggle with IBM to get bundle licensing such as Information Server Enterprise Edition or put QS on a separate VM. That can be a more valuable way to use the license since QS will not share CPU/RAM/IO with DataStage jobs.

IBM would not agree that it is a product limitation. Rather they would advise you to change your licensing to match your installation (purchase more QS capacity) or change your installation to match your licensing.

Vincent's idea of a separate VM for QualityStage has merit given your stated "requirement" to minimize licensing fees. You can still manage it from the same instance of WebSphere Application Server that you are using for DataStage, and thereby derive the benefits of shared metadata, etc.