ILMT Health Check: The 20 Point Audit

Most sub-capacity findings are not surprises to the auditor. They are configuration gaps that were sitting in plain sight for years. A disciplined health check surfaces those gaps on your terms, while there is still time to fix them, rather than on IBM's terms inside a finding.

Why a health check beats a surprise

The IBM License Metric Tool is only as useful as its configuration. It miscategorizes installs by default, it goes blind when an agent stops reporting, and it inflates counts when it cannot see your virtualization. Each of those is invisible until someone looks. The auditor will look. A self-administered health check, run on a regular cycle, lets you find and close the same gaps before they are priced.

The 20 points

Group the checks into five areas. Each point is a yes or no question, and any no is a gap to remediate.

Coverage and agents

• 1. Every eligible server runs a reporting agent.
• 2. No agents have been silent or stalled beyond the reporting window.
• 3. New hosts and clusters are onboarded within the eligibility window.
• 4. Decommissioned systems are retired cleanly, not left as phantom installs.

Software classification

• 5. Discovered installs are mapped to the correct product and edition.
• 6. Bundled components are modeled against their parent entitlement, not double counted.
• 7. Miscategorized installs have been manually corrected and confirmed.
• 8. Products no longer in use are confirmed as uninstalled, not merely stopped.

Virtualization and capacity

• 9. The VM manager connection is live for every hypervisor in scope.
• 10. Host and cluster core counts match the physical reality.
• 11. Sub-capacity is applied only where the virtualization technology is eligible.
• 12. Processor value unit values are correct for each processor type.

Reporting and retention

• 13. Reports are generated at least once per quarter without gaps.
• 14. Reports are retained for the full two year window.
• 15. The archive survives server rebuilds and staff turnover.
• 16. Peak consumption figures reconcile with your entitlements.

Operation and governance

• 17. ILMT runs continuously rather than in stop and start cycles.
• 18. The tool version is current and supported.
• 19. There is a named owner accountable for the configuration.
• 20. A change in the estate triggers a re-check rather than a quiet drift.

Reading your own results

A single no is rarely fatal, but the pattern matters. Gaps in coverage and reporting expose you to full-capacity charging for the unevidenced periods. Gaps in classification inflate the count today. Gaps in virtualization turn a small virtual footprint into a large physical one. Fix the reporting and retention points first, because those are the ones an auditor cannot un-see once the look-back begins.

Frequently asked questions