Converting legacy PVU entitlements to Cloud Pak.

When you move WebSphere, Db2, or MQ into a Cloud Pak, the PVU entitlements you already paid for can be converted into Virtual Processor Core entitlements through a defined ratio. Get the conversion factor or the as is baseline wrong, and the migration can quietly create exposure that surfaces at the next audit.

How the trade up works

IBM offers conversion paths that let existing Passport Advantage customers exchange standalone product entitlements for the equivalent Cloud Pak capacity. The conversion is expressed as a ratio: a quantity of Processor Value Units in the source product maps to a quantity of Virtual Processor Cores in the target Cloud Pak. Because a VPC and a PVU measure different things, the ratio is the whole game. It reflects the per core PVU rating of the product you are leaving and the VPC packaging of the Cloud Pak you are entering.

The practical effect is that a clean inventory of what you genuinely own in PVU terms becomes the foundation for what you are entitled to in VPC terms. If the source baseline is overstated or understated, every downstream VPC number inherits the error.

Where the conversion goes wrong

• The source PVU entitlement is taken from a deployment snapshot rather than the actual Proof of Entitlement record.
• Sub capacity rights that applied to the legacy product are not carried into the Cloud Pak baseline.
• Partial conversions leave a mix of legacy PVU and new VPC entitlements that are then double counted.
• The converted VPC entitlement is sized to current container consumption, which has grown since the trade up.

The recurring risk is that the migration is treated as a procurement event and not a licensing one. An auditor later reads the post conversion estate against whatever entitlement record is cleanest, and if that record does not reflect the conversion accurately, the gap reads as a shortfall.

How we keep a conversion defensible

Anchor on the real entitlement baseline

We start from the documented PVU position, not a deployment count, and reconcile it against Passport Advantage records before any ratio is applied. That independent PVU reconciliation is what makes the converted VPC number defensible if it is ever questioned.

Carry sub capacity rights forward

Sub capacity eligibility does not transfer by itself. We make sure the rights that constrained the legacy product to virtual cores are reflected in the Cloud Pak metric record, so the new estate is metered through the IBM License Service from day one rather than defaulting to full cluster counting.