Gigamon volume-based licensing (VBL) is the model Gigamon uses for the GigaVUE Cloud Suite, the virtual and cloud deployment of its traffic visibility products. Instead of counting virtual machines, nodes or cores, a VBL entitles specific applications on GigaVUE V Series nodes to process a stated amount of data. Gigamon describes the scheme as one in which a licence entitles specific applications to a specified amount of total data volume over the term of the licence, and it states that distributing the licence to individual nodes is irrelevant for Gigamon accounting purposes because GigaVUE-FM monitors consumption across all nodes and tracks usage and overage per application.[1] The commercial terms of that allowance sit in a separate document, the Supplement for Data Use Limits.[2]
How the allowance is defined
The Data Use Limits Supplement defines Data Use Limits as two possible quantities. For capacity-based products it is the maximum data in gigabits per second that may be ingested at any time by the customer’s cumulative total of capacity-based products. For volume-based products it is the maximum data in terabytes or petabytes that may be ingested over the course of each day by the cumulative total of volume-based products.[2] The limits are specified in each quote issued by Gigamon or its Authorized Channel Partner.[2]
Two features of this definition matter for a licence position. First, the limit is cumulative across all of the customer’s volume-based products, not set per node, region or cloud account. Second, the daily unit is the controlling one: the Licensing Guide names SKUs by their daily volume allowance, so that VBL-250T-BN-CORE denotes a daily allowance of 250 terabytes for the CoreVUE bundle.[1] The licences themselves are available as monthly subscriptions with a service period of one month, in which usage and overage are tracked.[1]
The usage statistics that feed the dashboards are based on the incoming data traffic, before it is processed by the Gigamon applications.[7]
Base bundles
Licences are offered as bundles. Three base bundles exist: CoreVUE, NetVUE and SecureVUE Plus.[1] The Licensing Guide lists the features per bundle for V Series nodes:
| Application | CoreVUE | NetVUE | SecureVUE Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slicing, masking, advanced load balancing, advanced tunneling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deduplication, NetFlow generation | No | Yes | Yes |
| Adaptive Packet Filtering | No | No | Yes |
| Application Filtering Intelligence | No | No | Yes |
| Application Metadata Intelligence and Exporter | No | No | Yes |
| Inline and out-of-band decryption, Precryption | No | No | Yes |
| Gigamon Enriched Metadata | No | No | Yes |
The same document also shows a wider matrix including NetVUE Plus and a separate SecureVUE column across V Series, HC Series Gen2 and HC Series Gen3 platforms, so the exact entitlement of a bundle depends on the platform where the application runs.[1]
To deploy any supported application in a monitoring session the customer needs one of the cloud licences, with the CoreVUE base bundle as the minimum. The default GigaVUE-FM licences do not give an entitlement for deploying monitoring session applications.[1]
Bundle replacement policy
The guide sets three rules. A customer can only upgrade to a higher bundle. A customer cannot hold two different base bundles at the same time, although several base bundles of the same type are allowed. As soon as the customer upgrades to a higher bundle, the existing lower bundles are deactivated automatically.[1] When several base bundles of the same type are active within the same time interval, the total volume is cumulative.[1]
Add-on packages
Add-on packages add applications to a base bundle and have their own start and end dates and volume specifications. The SKUs named in the guide are VBL-50T-ADD-5GC, VBL-250T-ADD-5GC, VBL-2500T-ADD-5GC and VBL-25KT-ADD-5GC.[1] Three rules constrain them.
- An active base bundle is required to use an add-on package.
- The base bundle limits the add-on: if the add-on allowance is smaller than the base bundle, the add-on handles only its own allocated volume.
- If an add-on package outlives the base bundle and the base bundle expires, the add-on allowance is reduced to zero until a new base bundle is added.[1]
Overage and the Data Use Limits Supplement
If the customer exceeds its contracted Data Use Limits, it agrees to upgrade to a higher product tier through the remainder of the applicable licence term. Gigamon may, at its sole discretion, allow a reasonable allowance for occasional or incidental overages before requiring the upgrade, and that allowance does not waive Gigamon’s right to enforce the limits or associated fees at any time.[2] Failure to pay the amounts owed on that basis may result in immediate termination of the customer’s product licences.[2]
The general Products Terms add a usage-reporting duty: the customer provides reasonable information, such as volume and capacity usage data, on licences activated, deployed or decommissioned within five business days of a written request, with no more than one request in any 12-month period unless the customer is found to have exceeded its licences. Where software was used beyond the limits in the supplement, quote or purchase order, the customer must promptly comply and pay additional fees at Gigamon’s then-current list price or previously agreed pricing that remains in effect.[3] The federal version of the terms attaches the Data Usage Limits Terms as an exhibit to the licence grant.[11]
Usage reports and records
If enabled by the customer, GigaVUE-FM transmits periodic usage reports to Gigamon to demonstrate compliance with the Data Use Limits. The supplement states that these transmissions do not permit Gigamon to see customer proprietary data processed by the products, proprietary network configuration information, or personal, financial, PCI or protected health data. If the customer disables Fabric Manager reporting, it must generate a monthly usage report in GigaVUE-FM and email it to Gigamon at the end of each month. The customer must keep complete and accurate records for at least one year after the licence expires.[2]
How GigaVUE-FM measures excess usage
GigaVUE-FM calculates average volume usage in terabytes per day every day, starting on the 15th day after a licence is installed, for the previous 14-day period. It divides average usage per day (U) by average allowed licence volume per day (A). If the ratio is 2 or more, it shows a banner and logs a Critical event; at a ratio of 1.25 it logs a Major event.[1] The guide gives an example: with an allowance of 250 terabytes per day and an average usage of 500 terabytes, U/A is 2 and the banner is shown.[1] After a licence upgrade or the import of additional licences of the same base bundle, the banner is suppressed until the next midnight, and after an upgrade it is not shown for the following 14-day period even if usage exceeds twice the allowance.[1]
These thresholds are product notifications. They are not the contractual measure, which is the Data Use Limit stated on the quote. A practitioner reconciling consumption should therefore use the daily allowance from the quote and the daily usage in the GigaVUE-FM dashboards, not the 2x banner.
Usage dashboards and reports
The Volume-based License Application Usage and Bundle Usage dashboards in GigaVUE-FM show, per licensed application, the allowance against usage and overage (by default over 90 days), and aggregate statistics: highest, average and 95th percentile daily usage, and highest and average daily overage. The 95th percentile figure for a day is computed from the trailing 90 days of daily usage sorted in ascending order. Summary dashboards group usage into usage periods of three months.[7] A Volume Based License Usage Report for a chosen service period can be generated in PDF form, and generating reports requires the GigaVUE-FM Prime licence.[9]
The VBL page in GigaVUE-FM lists, for active licences, the SKU, bundle, total daily allowance volume, start and end dates, licence type (commercial, trial, lab and other), Activation ID, Entitlement ID, Reference ID and status.[8]
Trial and expiry behaviour
After installing GigaVUE-FM, the customer receives a one-time, free 1TB SecureVUE Plus trial VBL for 60 days from installation.[4] An older AWS licensing page for release 6.11 describes the same trial as 30 days,[5] so the period depends on the documentation release. If no other VBL is installed, deployed monitoring sessions are undeployed from existing V Series nodes when the trial expires. If a new VBL is installed, the trial stays active alongside it and is deactivated automatically on expiry.[1]
When a volume-based licence expires, the customer cannot create, edit, deploy or redeploy a monitoring session, can still delete one, and traffic continues to pass.[1] The guide notes that for releases before 6.4 monitoring sessions using an expired licence were undeployed and redeployed on renewal.[1]
Buying through a cloud marketplace
GigaVUE Cloud Suite is available as an Amazon Machine Image product in the AWS Marketplace. A purchase through Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPO) comes with a volume-based licence, and the SKUs the documentation lists for CPPO are VBL-250T-BN-SVP, VBL-50T-BN-SVP and VBL-2500T-BN-NV.[6] Separately, the AWS Marketplace lists the GigaVUE V Series Node, V Series Controller, GigaVUE-FM and UCT-V Controller with a Bring Your Own License pricing model.[10] Pricing is not published in these documents.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the GigaSMART application licences used on HC Series appliances (see GigaVUE-OS and GigaSMART licences), the mechanics of generating and activating keys (see licence portal and activation), or any negotiated price or overage rate, which Gigamon does not publish.