What do licenses do I need?

[Khalil Hesam]

There are lots of licenses HP sells, and I really don't know which ones are really needed!!
Could anyone please write the benefits of having them? I mean licenses like Business Copy, Continuous Access and Replication Solution! why do you need them when you can do anything with lvm 2 ? or why do you need a license for a EVA hardware? when you have bought it you still need a license to use it? why?

P>S. This thread has been moved from General to Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Enterprise). - Hp Forum Moderator

[Víctor Cespón]

You need a license so Command View can operate the EVA, these are dependent on the total storage space, in 1 TB increments (or there's one for unlimited capacity).
Also, Business Copy and Continuous Access are in the controller firmware, but need to be activated with a license.
Yes, you can configure a software RAID with LVM, but BC and CA gives you possibilities that cannot be replicated in software. Check the documentation and read about snapshots, snapclones, mirrorclones and EVA replication in general.

[Khalil Hesam]

So as you say, you should get something like serial numbers with your licenses to enable the EVA BC and CA attributes? As I checked a newly shipped EVA the system had BC and CA enabled on it the first time they powered on and I didn't see anything like that. Also what's this replication solution manager? is it something other than CA and BC? and what the license looks like?

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

If you're using Command View 7, it comes with 2 temporary licences for BC and CA, for 180 days. The licences are text files, that contain the EVA WWN, and must be pasted on the licensing page on Command View.
RSM is a software solution to automate the Business Copy solution, it allows you to create scripts to create / delete snapshots, present / unpresent them to the server, mount / unmount them... this allows you to perform zero-downtime backup. A snapshot is created in a few seconds, and can be presented to a server like a point-in-time image of a volume, so you can do a consistent backup without having to stop all running applications for hours.