Taking control of workload peaks to reduce software licence costs

Because mainframe software licence costs are based on peak usage it is vital to understand when and where these peaks occur.

Using techniques to control capacity and manage your MSU usage can pay dividends in many ways. Controlling capacity allows you to specify a limit to the Rolling 4 hour average MSU usage an LPAR, or group of LPARs can demand. With the correct monitoring and definition it is possible to implement capacity control such that the performance of the machine is not impacted but the variable Workload Charging (vWLC) software costs are reduced. Continued reviews of the Defined Capacity limits should become an integral part of Capacity Management.

Effectively controlling capacity provides additional benefits:

Protection against large spikes in usage and therefore unforeseen large Monthly Licence Charge (MLC) software costs.

Machine upgrades can be controlled better to avoid the spiking immediately after the additional MIPS are installed.

Tuning activities that produce a reduction in CPU demand show real financial results

The majority of mainframe users also have significant potential for reducing resource consumption through tuning. This is especially true for those with older applications that haven’t been actively maintained for a while or who have lost some of their deep DB2 skills through retirement or redundancy.

By implementing key tuning procedures, ongoing software costs can be reduced and mainframe upgrades deferred. In addition, application performance will be enhanced and overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduced.