GSE UK Conference 2008

"Be Recognized"

Abstract:

The VWLC policy is the real innovation of the WLC software pricing policy proposed by IBM in mainframe environments. VWLC allows you to pay software license fees based on the CPU usage in MSU (calculated based on a 4-hour rolling average) instead of the CPC capacity. To guarantee the expected savings IBM introduced the possibility of setting both a defined capacity limit at the LPAR level and a group capacity limit (since z/OS 1.8) at the CPC level. Aggressive use of these parameters could allow to a further reduction in software costs. However it's important to remember that defined and group capacity limits could be harmful for an application's performance which could be "soft capped" by WLM when the 4-hour rolling average hits those limits. You normally could accept this risk for low importance workload but not for your "loved ones".

A technique is presented to:

• analyze the 4-hour rolling average by WLM workload importance,
• evaluate optimal "defined" and "group" capacity limits,
• estimate possible MSU savings.

Additional savings could be obtained through a full exploitation of AAP and IIP technology; a similar technique is presented to:

• evaluate the amount of CPU usage which is eligible to run on AAP and/or IIP but is still running on standard CPUs;
• evaluate the MSU 4-hour rolling average on the hypothesis that 90% of this eligible workload runs on additional AAP and/or IIP engines;
• estimate possible MSU savings;
• decide if buying AAP and/or IIP engines will enable you to save money.

Fabio Massimo Ottaviani has been involved in the areas of Performance, Service Levels, Capacity Planning and Cost Accounting since 1982. In 2002 he joined EPV Technologies as Technical Director to design the EPV products suite. He is involved in projects aimed at the performance optimization of IMS, CICS and Websphere applications and in general of z/OS environments. He also performs periodical Capacity Planning activities at many customers sites in Italy. Fabio Massimo Ottaviani has been involved in CMG-Italia activities since 1989 presenting many papers at CMG-Italia conferences and winning the Best Paper Award in 2001 and 2004. He is also a frequent speaker at GSE conferences in Italy and abroad. He has been a board member from 1991 to 1992, he served as vice president from 1993 to 1996 and as president from 1997 to 2000. Fabio Massimo Ottaviani has a degree in Statistics.

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