Are you sure they are only looking at the serial number?  Some vendors look at 
both the model and the serial as part of their license.  As for the serial 
number you are correct about being concerned about what are they looking at.  
I've seen some look at the lpar serial number and some look at the serial 
number for the box.  I have been bitten by that in the past.  Then I've seen 
some just look at the last 4 digits of the serial number.

So bottom line I agree you need to somehow politely ask the vendor.

Thanks..

Paul Feller
AGT Mainframe Technical Support

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Charles Mills
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 11:12
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: serial numbers ... real and imagine

Are you on support? Ask the vendor?

Speaking as a vendor, I would not ask "where do you get your serial number 
from?" but rather "what are the terms of our license and what is your 
definition of a 'machine' for license purposes?" You don't want to fool the 
product and then end up on 60 Minutes because you are violating the (paper) 
license.

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Adams, Anne (DTI)
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 9:05 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: serial numbers ... real and imagine

Hello friends,

How can I determine where a software product is pulling the serial number of 
the hardware? We'd like to be able to run a z/VM guest (for DR) with the same 
serial number as our current mainframe. That way we don’t have to call for 
temporary license keys. However, our DR provider has warned us that some 
products will interrogate the physical hardware rather than what the OS is 
holding or what I have in the iodf. Any way beforehand to see where those 
values are coming from?
Thanks.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to