Does everybody use chargeback?
I’d wondered why SMT is turned off for CPs on the new z13 and z13s. I learned at SHARE that it’s because CPU timing can’t be done as accurately when using SMT, and since that could affect chargeback it’s not allowed. This is interesting, because we’ve never done chargeback here at UT. I was wondering how unusual this makes us. (I know we’re unusual in lots of ways, but I hadn’t thought much about chargeback.) So just to satisfy my curiosity, how many of y’all don’t do chargeback? -- Pew, Curtis G curtis@austin.utexas.edu ITS Systems/Core/Administrative Services -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
OT to your exact question but I think also IBM (I am probably not phrasing this exactly to the party line) wanted to get more experience with SMT before turning it on in their crown jewel operating system. Or perhaps, more bluntly, they have not made the changes to the z/OS dispatcher and WLM necessary to reasonably support SMT. Repeatable CPU timing is a thing of the past in any event. I have a product where I can demonstrate an almost 3:1 variance in CPU time *for the exact same workload* depending on how fast I push the transactions through the product. Faster push = more cache hits = less CPU time. Charles -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Pew, Curtis G Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 9:40 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Does everybody use chargeback? I’d wondered why SMT is turned off for CPs on the new z13 and z13s. I learned at SHARE that it’s because CPU timing can’t be done as accurately when using SMT, and since that could affect chargeback it’s not allowed. This is interesting, because we’ve never done chargeback here at UT. I was wondering how unusual this makes us. (I know we’re unusual in lots of ways, but I hadn’t thought much about chargeback.) So just to satisfy my curiosity, how many of y’all don’t do chargeback? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Curtis: At one installation we used it to get gross idea for charging for usage. It worked well until we accidently found out that the numbers were *WAY* off (we weren't charging for execution batch monitoring). The *SHIT* hit the fan and the subsidiary was sold off a few years later. That left us with 3 divisions to charge back to. It was entirely dropped when the entire IT division was shipped off to another state. It is doable but make damn sure the numbers are close to reality or you may pay with your job. No oops or do overs. Ed On Mar 7, 2016, at 11:40 AM, Pew, Curtis G wrote: I’d wondered why SMT is turned off for CPs on the new z13 and z13s. I learned at SHARE that it’s because CPU timing can’t be done as accurately when using SMT, and since that could affect chargeback it’s not allowed. This is interesting, because we’ve never done chargeback here at UT. I was wondering how unusual this makes us. (I know we’re unusual in lots of ways, but I hadn’t thought much about chargeback.) So just to satisfy my curiosity, how many of y’all don’t do chargeback? -- Pew, Curtis G curtis@austin.utexas.edu ITS Systems/Core/Administrative Services -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
I believe that while chargeback is an important issue that SMT messes up, that's already somewhat messed up today because there's more variance from execution to execution. I.E. run the same exact job twice and even absent SMT you'll get different CPU measurements. That's always been the case, but it's much larger today than when I started measuring such things in some detail in the 90s. Add SMT into the mix and it gets even more "interesting". But I believe the bigger issue for SMT is the inability to determine the impact on available capacity within an acceptable tolerance. Software billing is based on available/consumed capacity. (Consumed capacity just be a factor of you used x% of the available capacity.) So how would they set the MSU/MIPS rating of a machine with SMT enabled on the GCPs? IBM could be generous and simply say "SMT capacity is free", in other words it doesn't affect the MSU ratings. But whether all ISVs would go along with that point of view is a big question. And for those that don't want to go along with it, what would they do? But software is bigger money than hardware, so IBM may not want to be as generous as giving away approximately 0 to 30% of their software revenue. In that case, the calculations for the R4HA gets even more complicated. Although I believe RMF contains the numbers that could be used for doing that, the basis for some of the numbers have not been fully explained (to my knowledge--it's also possible my brain hasn't fully understood the explanations that are available). I believe they're coming out of CPU-MF but I don't think they're externalized in the 113s. Even absent the chargeback and software cost issues, how do you do capacity planning with that level of variability? How do you do performance testing? Of course the other platforms that have this sort of technology seem to largely just say something like "oh we just by a 4, 8 or 16 way machine"--but that's possible because of the hardware and software costs being smaller increments. I'm not sure we can make that work in the current z world. But this sort of technology seems likely to be part of the way forward for increasing CPU capacity, so I suspect that we (the z community) will have to address the issues eventually. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
On 3/8/2016 3:58 AM, Scott Chapman wrote: Even absent the chargeback and software cost issues, how do you do capacity planning with that level of variability? How do you do performance testing? Of course the other platforms that have this sort of technology seem to largely just say something like "oh we just by a 4, 8 or 16 way machine"--but that's possible because of the hardware and software costs being smaller increments. I'm not sure we can make that work in the current z world. Other platforms price software by cores (that's even true on Linux for z), so software costs for a 16-way machine are 4X those of a 4-way machine. Those platforms have serious financial incentive to limit the number of cores whereas our z-based incentive is to *increase* the number of cores (to obtain more points of dispatch) -- even if it means running sub-capacity. Threads should therefore be quite helpful to us, except... The great thing about threads is they don't add to software costs for core-based pricing, so if you multithread three IFLs, you get the throughput of of ~4.2 cores for the price of three. Not bad economics. Setting aside the variability and repeatability issues for a moment, CPU-based chargeback schemes will charge ~4.2 times as much as for those same three cores when multithreading. I consider those economics to be rather unfortunate. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Scott Chapman wrote: >Software billing is based on available/consumed capacity. IBM's is/are not. It's based on *peak* four hour rolling average utilization per month -- or, effectively, per subscription year for products that are not Monthly License Charge products. You can set whatever pricing scheme you want, I suppose. Your chargeback system could be based on counting keystrokes (and clicks and taps) on client devices, for example. That keystroke-based approach might even be more closely aligned with actual marginal costs of computing services than some of the chargeback schemes I've seen. In my view a bad chargeback regime is worse than no chargeback regime, and it's quite easy to have a bad chargeback regime. "Bad" here means encouraging perverse behaviors and/or discouraging smart behaviors. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Ah, bad or perverse behaviors. Two stand out in my career. -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. -- An ISAM application that could have been converted to VSAM--as discussed in a recent thread--was deliberately left to the sluggish vicissitudes of ISAM because of how the client contract was written. Data center would have collected less revenue with a more efficient process. Yuck. . . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2016 9:18 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Scott Chapman wrote: >Software billing is based on available/consumed capacity. IBM's is/are not. It's based on *peak* four hour rolling average utilization per month -- or, effectively, per subscription year for products that are not Monthly License Charge products. You can set whatever pricing scheme you want, I suppose. Your chargeback system could be based on counting keystrokes (and clicks and taps) on client devices, for example. That keystroke-based approach might even be more closely aligned with actual marginal costs of computing services than some of the chargeback schemes I've seen. In my view a bad chargeback regime is worse than no chargeback regime, and it's quite easy to have a bad chargeback regime. "Bad" here means encouraging perverse behaviors and/or discouraging smart behaviors. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Your first example is not necessarily bad behavior. I bet it performed! -teD Original Message From: Jesse 1 Robinson Sent: Wednesday, March 9, 2016 00:59 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Reply To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List Subject: Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Ah, bad or perverse behaviors. Two stand out in my career. -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. -- An ISAM application that could have been converted to VSAM--as discussed in a recent thread--was deliberately left to the sluggish vicissitudes of ISAM because of how the client contract was written. Data center would have collected less revenue with a more efficient process. Yuck. . . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2016 9:18 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Scott Chapman wrote: >Software billing is based on available/consumed capacity. IBM's is/are not. It's based on *peak* four hour rolling average utilization per month -- or, effectively, per subscription year for products that are not Monthly License Charge products. You can set whatever pricing scheme you want, I suppose. Your chargeback system could be based on counting keystrokes (and clicks and taps) on client devices, for example. That keystroke-based approach might even be more closely aligned with actual marginal costs of computing services than some of the chargeback schemes I've seen. In my view a bad chargeback regime is worse than no chargeback regime, and it's quite easy to have a bad chargeback regime. "Bad" here means encouraging perverse behaviors and/or discouraging smart behaviors. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Ted MacNEIL wrote: >Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: >>-- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the >>entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they >>were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual >>storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. >Your first example is not necessarily bad behavior. >I bet it performed! Good catch! (I overlooked that part...) I agree that usage of virtual storage is better for performance. That is if you have enough storage and you don't get paged out/in too much. Of course it depends on the size of that DB and what algorithm you're using to drop last referenced records. RACF is doing more or less the same (per profiles only, not the whole DB!). XCF makes that easier. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 11:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > Ah, bad or perverse behaviors. Two stand out in my career. > > -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the > entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that > they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy > virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. > > -- An ISAM application that could have been converted to VSAM--as > discussed in a recent thread--was deliberately left to the sluggish > vicissitudes of ISAM because of how the client contract was written. Data > center would have collected less revenue with a more efficient process. > Yuck. > > We no longer do any type of charge back. But I recall one bad from the past. We charged based on service units. One group noticed that if they ran a job at night, it would take more service. So they demanded that it run during the day. The reason it got more SUs at night was because the system was closer to idle. So more real memory was available. So their "working set" wasn't being trimmed. So the MSO (Main Storage Occupancy) portion of the SU amount went up. Basically, they were penalized for running work while the system was less busy. We changed the SU calculation so that MSO was 0, or as close to 0 as we could make it. > . > . > . > J.O.Skip Robinson > Southern California Edison Company > Electric Dragon Team Paddler > SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager > 323-715-0595 Mobile > 626-302-7535 Office > robin...@sce.com > > -- A fail-safe circuit will destroy others. -- Klipstein Maranatha! <>< John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
>Scott Chapman wrote: >>Software billing is based on available/consumed capacity. > >IBM's is/are not. It's based on *peak* four hour rolling average >utilization per month -- or, effectively, per subscription year for >products that are not Monthly License Charge products. Peak R4Ha is a measure of consumed capacity, it just happens to end up being a subset of the utilization for the month. And very commonly there are multiple periods that reach that same peak value. zOTC costs can be based on usage as well--with the appropriate subcap agreement in place, you only have to pre-purchace entitlement to match your peak R4HA too. But if you don't purchase enough entitlement to satisfy that, then you'll have to then purchase the appropriate amount when/if the monthly peak R4HA is greater than your entitlement. My understanding is that that is billed at list price. Because of the R4HA variability and the ability to negotiate better prices during such zOTC product acquisition and/or the ELA process, often it may be better just to license zOTC for the installed capacity. ELAs complicate things of course, but they still come back to if you use more capacity and/or you have more capacity installed, you pay more. Moving to a straight per-core charge and ignoring the theoretical capacity of the core (as Ed Jaffe pointed out is common on other platforms) is possibly what should be done. Or, where possible, tie the software costs to the business value--such as a provider of print management software bases the charge on the number of printers. But when the charge is based on some utilization, it occurs to me that perhaps that encourages one to find ways to not utilize the platform. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
On Mar 8, 2016, at 11:18 PM, Timothy Sipples wrote: > > In my view a bad chargeback regime is worse than no chargeback regime, and > it's quite easy to have a bad chargeback regime. "Bad" here means > encouraging perverse behaviors and/or discouraging smart behaviors. Since I started this thread, I’ll jump back in. This is why we never did chargeback; our director from 1968 through about 1993 felt that if we did people would do the wrong thing to avoid computer charges. (The main “wrong thing” being continue to use manual processes instead of automating.) -- Pew, Curtis G curtis@austin.utexas.edu ITS Systems/Core/Administrative Services -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Pew, Curtis G wrote: >Since I started this thread, I’ll jump back in. Welcome back... ;-) >This is why we never did chargeback; our director from 1968 through about 1993 >felt that if we did people would do the wrong thing to avoid computer charges. >(The main “wrong thing” being continue to use manual processes instead of >automating.) That is a very good reasoning. I can't find any fault with that. If you get your chargeback defined+setup properly, do your SMF, DCOLLECT, 3th party transaction monitor, etc. properly, you can't go wrong with chargeback. Do it properly so the users can't avoid 'expensive' things. One example, we charge for allocated space, not used space. 'They' quickly learn to do allocations properly. In years before SMS, we charged for each duplicate datasets. The users? They just went G! ;-) After SMS is in use, we warned our users that we will delete uncataloged datasets without warning, they complied. Of course, users pay less. Also, if something is in a loop, we simply cancel that thing, whether it is excessive CPU, SMF or DASD usage. In this way, no one complains about x million rands for a single [runaway] job. You have RACF? Why don't you use it to prevent 'wrong processes'. For example, we limit COBOL to 'approved' CECs. These programmers quickly learn where to do their compiling. Alternative is, we can charge them for using wrong LPARs, but RACF is better. This is not about being a rude nanny (Think about that miserable bitch Rottenmeier in 'Heidi' by Johanna Spyri), but just be reasonable for all persons like sysprogs, DBAs, clients, bean-counters and management and of course to IBM. Of course, we change with the technology, for example we charged for each 3800 printer page. Today, we are not printing directly from JES2, but chargeback for actual printing is done in another way. Same for tape reels. Chargeback for that tapes were discontinued. I agree chargeback is not for everyone, so YMMV. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
On 3/8/2016 9:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. They were obviously ahead of their time! These days, memory-mapped files are highly encouraged as one way to utilize that "free" memory everyone is getting on their z13! -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 08:12:18 -0800, Ed Jaffe wrote: >On 3/8/2016 9:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: >> -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the >> entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they >> were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy >> virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. > >They were obviously ahead of their time! These days, memory-mapped files >are highly encouraged as one way to utilize that "free" memory everyone >is getting on their z13! > Decades ago, I knew a site with a chargeback formula in which average memory use was a factor. But the formula was such that adding a job step that ran a counter loop at minimal memory could decrease the total charge for the job. And I knew a parsimonious programmer who routinely exploited this. And that site charged for disk storage by a daily audit at 0300 so he dumped all his files to tape at 1800 and restored them at 0600. Storage was more expensive back then. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Interestingly, I know of at least 1 customer for whom sticking the whole of their main DB2 table in memory ISN'T an option - even with the biggest (10TB) z13. I'm jolly sure they're not alone. And I suspect this will persist for a VERY long time. Absolutely not against Data In Memory. Far from it, by the way. Cheers, Martin Martin Packer, zChampion, Principal Systems Investigator, Worldwide Cloud & Systems Performance, IBM +44-7802-245-584 email: martin_pac...@uk.ibm.com Twitter / Facebook IDs: MartinPacker Blog: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/MartinPacker From: Ed Jaffe To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Date: 09/03/2016 16:12 Subject: Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List On 3/8/2016 9:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. They were obviously ahead of their time! These days, memory-mapped files are highly encouraged as one way to utilize that "free" memory everyone is getting on their z13! -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
:Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
For the record, the in-storage database was not huge, but this was the late 1970s, so all resources were dearer in those days. The RYO database was ingenious but primitive. It was based believe it or not on a set of PO data sets accessed via BDAM (!). The decision to go all memory came late in the development process, so there was little consideration in the design for efficient use of virtual storage. My best chargeback example comes from the late great Security Pacific Bank, where we went to greaaat lengths to send out bills for system use. (I mentioned in an earlier post the elaborate scheme of account numbers, which were used as well in TSO by developers--hence the use of UADS for multiple account numbers per user.) The biggest problem with this chargeback mechanism was its enormous drain on resources. Collecting and processing barrelsful of SMF data turned out be one of the biggest applications in the shop--which was all overhead that had to be amortized across the business units. I can't believe that it was worth the trouble and cost. . . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 9:09 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Interestingly, I know of at least 1 customer for whom sticking the whole of their main DB2 table in memory ISN'T an option - even with the biggest (10TB) z13. I'm jolly sure they're not alone. And I suspect this will persist for a VERY long time. Absolutely not against Data In Memory. Far from it, by the way. Cheers, Martin Martin Packer, zChampion, Principal Systems Investigator, Worldwide Cloud & Systems Performance, IBM +44-7802-245-584 email: martin_pac...@uk.ibm.com Twitter / Facebook IDs: MartinPacker Blog: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/MartinPacker From: Ed Jaffe To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Date: 09/03/2016 16:12 Subject: Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List On 3/8/2016 9:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read > the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. They were obviously ahead of their time! These days, memory-mapped files are highly encouraged as one way to utilize that "free" memory everyone is getting on their z13! -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: >If you get your chargeback defined+setup properly, >do your SMF, DCOLLECT, 3th party transaction monitor, >etc. properly, you can't go wrong with chargeback. I disagree, unless the "etc. properly" part is truly enormous in scope. I notice you didn't mention anything outside the mainframe, for example. Is everything else free? :-) Here's another gigantic problem. Even if (big if) you could precisely measure and allocate marginal costs at every moment, is cost the *only* factor? No, it's only one factor...along with (vectors of) functionality and quality. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
I've worked for, and as a customer of, many sites with chargeback in place. Your two vectors were RARELY taken into account! Some even tried to do capacity management with the data. "Oh look! The unit cost per transaction is going down! We DO NOT need an upgrade!" Funny thing, aside from whether the metrics were correct, the unit cost was going down because we were using the dead-space at night, due to opening up access by the INTERNET; the day-time peak (which was driving need) was still increasing. Over-night access was getting a 'free ride'. But, the bean counters were still using the data to 'plan'. -teD Original Message From: Timothy Sipples Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 01:19 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Reply To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List Subject: Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: >If you get your chargeback defined+setup properly, >do your SMF, DCOLLECT, 3th party transaction monitor, >etc. properly, you can't go wrong with chargeback. I disagree, unless the "etc. properly" part is truly enormous in scope. I notice you didn't mention anything outside the mainframe, for example. Is everything else free? :-) Here's another gigantic problem. Even if (big if) you could precisely measure and allocate marginal costs at every moment, is cost the *only* factor? No, it's only one factor...along with (vectors of) functionality and quality. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Timothy Sipples wrote: >Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: >>If you get your chargeback defined+setup properly, do your SMF, DCOLLECT, 3th >>party transaction monitor, etc. properly, you can't go wrong with chargeback. >I disagree, unless the "etc. properly" part is truly enormous in scope. Feel free to disagree. I fully respect you and read all your posts (as I do with other posts). Sometimes I relay your announcements to my colleagues. >I notice you didn't mention anything outside the mainframe, for example. This is IBM-MAIN, the last time I checked! ;-D But to clarify, our chargeback systems are taking in account of everything. For mainframe - batch jobs, transactions, printing. For services (DBAs, call centre agents, z/OS, networking, office space, software development, etc.) we also do chargeback. I will not go further in details of chargeback and service level agreements, because we deliver an all-in-all services (mainframe, midrange, PCs, laptops, networking, printing, training, etc.) to clients. >Is everything else free? :-) I really wish... ;-D >Here's another gigantic problem. Even if (big if) you could precisely measure >and allocate marginal costs at every moment, is cost the *only* factor? No, >it's only one factor...along with (vectors of) functionality and quality. Agreed. For example about printing, we see how many boxes of paper are used each month and then we see how many clients are printing how many pages. All costs (electricity, staff, paper, ink, etc.) are combined and tariffs (A4, A3, black/white or colour, simplex/duplex) are then worked out. Not precisely, but a reasonable estimate so we don't run bankrupt or overcharge them that the clients are dropping us. So if you print 5 pages, it should cost you a few cents, but if you print 20 boxes of A4 pages, then your wallet will get somewhat hurt. The same goes for a batch job. A little IEBGENER is cheap-cheap, but a long running DB2 job with query from hell is expensive. For some costs, you just can't calculate it. One example, we don't charge for FTP, simply there is no accurate way to try to guess costs. To conclude: chargeback is a fine art of balancing costs and profits... Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: >For some costs, you just can't calculate it. One example, we >don't charge for FTP, simply there is no accurate way to try >to guess costs. But you are guessing. You guessed zero. As I'm fond of saying, we might not know what the correct answer is, but zero is surely the wrong answer. I'm not necessarily opposed to FTP, but it is significantly overused. It comes with some major downside costs, such as: 1. Security context is lost, making information governance (and privacy protection) quite a bit more difficult; 2. It tends to get overused for application integration purposes, automatically resulting in batch interactions even between two "online" applications. Sometimes batch interactions are fine, but sometimes they are quite undesirable from a business point of view. I'll reiterate that it really is quite difficult to do chargebacks well, and perhaps you've proved my assertion. :-) But how do you charge for greater enterprise information security risks (#1)? What's that chargeback rate? That's a very interesting and rather tough question to answer, but "zero is the wrong answer." Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: :Re: Does everybody use chargeback?
I created a full-chargeback system using CA-JARS, DCOLLECTS, etc. The issue was the users just about had a heart attack, when we went after their GREEN money, not their funny money Steve -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jesse 1 Robinson Sent: Wednesday, March 9, 2016 12:17 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: :Re: Does everybody use chargeback? For the record, the in-storage database was not huge, but this was the late 1970s, so all resources were dearer in those days. The RYO database was ingenious but primitive. It was based believe it or not on a set of PO data sets accessed via BDAM (!). The decision to go all memory came late in the development process, so there was little consideration in the design for efficient use of virtual storage. My best chargeback example comes from the late great Security Pacific Bank, where we went to greaaat lengths to send out bills for system use. (I mentioned in an earlier post the elaborate scheme of account numbers, which were used as well in TSO by developers--hence the use of UADS for multiple account numbers per user.) The biggest problem with this chargeback mechanism was its enormous drain on resources. Collecting and processing barrelsful of SMF data turned out be one of the biggest applications in the shop--which was all overhead that had to be amortized across the business units. I can't believe that it was worth the trouble and cost. . . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 9:09 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Interestingly, I know of at least 1 customer for whom sticking the whole of their main DB2 table in memory ISN'T an option - even with the biggest (10TB) z13. I'm jolly sure they're not alone. And I suspect this will persist for a VERY long time. Absolutely not against Data In Memory. Far from it, by the way. Cheers, Martin Martin Packer, zChampion, Principal Systems Investigator, Worldwide Cloud & Systems Performance, IBM +44-7802-245-584 email: martin_pac...@uk.ibm.com Twitter / Facebook IDs: MartinPacker Blog: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/MartinPacker From: Ed Jaffe To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Date: 09/03/2016 16:12 Subject: Re: Does everybody use chargeback? Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List On 3/8/2016 9:59 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > -- A data base application was redesigned at the last minute to read > the entire data base into memory at startup. The business unit noticed that they were charged for I/O but not for memory use. It was cheaper to occupy virtual storage than to perform reads. So much for common sense. They were obviously ahead of their time! These days, memory-mapped files are highly encouraged as one way to utilize that "free" memory everyone is getting on their z13! -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SMT vs. chargeback [was: Does everybody use chargeback?]
The U of Zero (*grin*) hasn't charged back for more than 2.5 decades. I still saw account numbers in job cards when I started back then but expect it was hold-over from the card/batch-only days and habit from the lifers that ran the system. Given our expected un-plug in the next year, the PTB are not likely to entertain the notion either. I do recall, as a student, that my CMS account had a monthly limit (5 CPU minutes?) but I joined the (priviledged) HelpDesk crowd and could compute to my heart's content. [pause] I see that IBM was granted a patent for this very subject last October. Reading only the abstract, it might be difficult to shoehorn zIIPs into the process since, " The logical core is run on the single physical core on an exclusive basis for a period of time, such that the logical threads of the logical core execute on physical threads of the single physical core." That text would seem to preclude processor switches or remove the true concept of multi-threading. (If all my threads have to run on a single CP, don't I become singly threaded?) Like I said, I didn't read (much) below the abstract. Interesting topic. http://www.google.com/patents/US20150277984 Publication number US20150277984 A1 Publication typeApplication Application number US 14/231,794 Publication dateOct 1, 2015 Filing date Apr 1, 2014 Priority date Apr 1, 2014 [snip] > signature = 8 lines follows < Neil Duffee, Joe Sysprog, uOttawa, Ottawa, Ont, Canada telephone:1 613 562 5800 x4585 fax:1 613 562 5161 mailto:NDuffee of uOttawa.ca http:/ /aix1.uOttawa.ca/ ~nduffee “How *do* you plan for something like that?” Guardian Bob, Reboot “For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.” “Systems Programming: Guilty, until proven innocent” John Norgauer 2004 "Schrodinger's backup: The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted." John McKown 2015 -Original Message- From: Pew, Curtis G [mailto:cur...pe...@aus...ute...edu] Sent: March 7, 2016 12:40 Subject: Does everybody use chargeback? I’d wondered why SMT is turned off for CPs on the new z13 and z13s. I learned at SHARE that it’s because CPU timing can’t be done as accurately when using SMT, and since that could affect chargeback it’s not allowed. This is interesting, because we’ve never done chargeback here at UT. I was wondering how unusual this makes us. (I know we’re unusual in lots of ways, but I hadn’t thought much about chargeback.) So just to satisfy my curiosity, how many of y’all don’t do chargeback? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SMT vs. chargeback [was: Does everybody use chargeback?]
Patents are tricky to read. The Abstract is semi-meaningless. Only the "claims" really matter, and they are tricky to read also. Charles -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Neil Duffee Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2016 11:44 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: SMT vs. chargeback [was: Does everybody use chargeback?] The U of Zero (*grin*) hasn't charged back for more than 2.5 decades. I still saw account numbers in job cards when I started back then but expect it was hold-over from the card/batch-only days and habit from the lifers that ran the system. Given our expected un-plug in the next year, the PTB are not likely to entertain the notion either. I do recall, as a student, that my CMS account had a monthly limit (5 CPU minutes?) but I joined the (priviledged) HelpDesk crowd and could compute to my heart's content. [pause] I see that IBM was granted a patent for this very subject last October. Reading only the abstract, it might be difficult to shoehorn zIIPs into the process since, " The logical core is run on the single physical core on an exclusive basis for a period of time, such that the logical threads of the logical core execute on physical threads of the single physical core." That text would seem to preclude processor switches or remove the true concept of multi-threading. (If all my threads have to run on a single CP, don't I become singly threaded?) Like I said, I didn't read (much) below the abstract. Interesting topic. http://www.google.com/patents/US20150277984 Publication number US20150277984 A1 Publication typeApplication Application number US 14/231,794 Publication dateOct 1, 2015 Filing date Apr 1, 2014 Priority date Apr 1, 2014 [snip] -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SMT vs. chargeback [was: Does everybody use chargeback?]
On 3/8/2016 11:44 AM, Neil Duffee wrote: If all my threads have to run on a single CP, don't I become singly threaded? That is precisely the concept behind SMT (symmetric multithreading). During the pipeline stalls that inevitably occur (e.g., interlocks, cache misses, etc.) the other thread gains access to the execution resources of the core. Each thread has its own PSW, registers, timers, etc. but there is only one core. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
