The best model is one I heard last week at the ibm conference. One large "well known"
installation charges only for prime shift, with 3 different rates based on types of
service. All charges are based on resource consumption. With the usage charges and prime
shift only charges, users are convinced to move some "batch operations" off shift where
resources are plentiful and "free". This encourages high CPU activites that can be off
shift to be moved off shift. The three different service rates relate to 7x24 support,
prime shift support, and a "best effort".
Installations not charging for resource consumption in a mainframe environment tell their
customers that tuning is not important, and neither is workload planning. This is good
for IBM's profit as it increases the IFL requirement, but will end up with applications
consuming more resource and can make other platforms much more attractive. One
performance person is worth their power consumption in IFLs so to speak....
Most important is to understand your objective: chargeback and recover costs, or manage
costs with chargeback and minimize resource requirements. Several installations have
charged "by server", and quickly found users will abuse the system unless encouraged
otherwise.
Juarez, David T. wrote:
We are in the process of getting ready to add production Linux guest and we need to know
how you are charging back the customer for running Linux under z/VM. We
currently charge a
fixed fee per month for small, medium and large based on the size of the
individual server's
memory, cpu, and network connections. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
David Juárez
Department of Veterans Affairs
IT Specialist - z/OS and z/VM Systems Programmer
512-326-6116
