The Greed in Software Licensing

I've been getting frustrated lately with a situation that I've been arguing with Hitachi Data Systems about over a product we licensed called Tiered Storage Manager (TSM). TSM migrates data from one disk device to another disk device in a non-disruptive manner to the host that is using the disk device. When we initially did our purchase of the product we were going to manage a total of about 40 TB of disk with the USP1100. While we were negotiating pricing we knew we were not going to want to migrate all of the data that was being managed by the USP with TSM, so we only purchased a 25 TB license. So we knew that at any one time we would not try and migrate more than 25 TB of data. This was fine with HDS at the time and the deal went all the way up the food chain all the way over to Japan for approval. Now HDS is telling us that we must purchase a TSM license for all of the storage we have attached to the USP even though we would never migrate that much data. Think about the idiocy of this, if I have 100 TB of data attached to the USP, I have to have a 100 TB license for TSM. Who in their right mind would try and move 100 TB of data at one time? Hell, who would move more than a few TB at one time? This to me is purely greed on the part of a storage vendor. Someone trying to make a few extra dollars and not caring what the end user thinks. Well this end user thinks it sucks and I'm calling on all of the other end users to raise your flag of disgust and let HDS (or another vendor your having this problem with) have it. Not being one to not offer a technical solution for a problem, let me tell HDS how they can fix it. In my case I have a 25 TB license of Data Migrator V2 on the USP. All HDS would have to do is have the TSM application check the total amount of storage that I have in my migration groups against the license key on the USP, and if my migration group total is less than what I have licensed, let me do my migration. If not, I need to increase my TSM license or delete some storage out of my migration groups. It's simple. HDS has probably already thought of this, but is reluctant to change it since they're making money. So we have simply refused to pay anymore for the licenses. If they want us to buy thier storage for upgrades, then they'll give it to us for free. Simple as that. But my argument still stands, don't be greedy. Oh and just so people don't think HDS is the only one that does this just look at what EMC did with SAN Manager a few years ago. It used to be a seperate product, but then they made LUN Security part of SAN Manager so you had to buy it. Then they claim they had all this great market share because their product was great. Not! They made people buy it just so they could manage their storage. EDIT: I forgot to mention that you have to also include your CoW pools, your HUR journal volumes, and any other storage that you have on the disk subsystem in your TSM licensing. Now why would I want to migrate data to those volumes Hitachi?