Overview of sub-capacity pricing

IBM bases sub-capacity pricing on the four-hour rolling average (4HRA) utilization of IBM z/OS LPARs recorded during the period of a month. A monthly period runs from 00:00 on the second day of the month through midnight (23:59) on the first day of the next month.

The unit of measurement for LPAR use is Millions of Service Units (MSUs) used per hour.

Related topic

How-iCap-works


Important

MSUs are also called Software MSUs (as opposed to Hardware MSUs).

MSUs are calculated as follows:

MSUs = <cpuSecondsPerHour> × <softwareServiceUnitsCoefficient>

In this equation, cpuSecondsPerHour refers to those used by general-purpose CPs in a z/OS LPAR. The Software Service Units coefficient is reported in field SMF70CPA of the SMF type 70 record.

The Software Service Units coefficient determines the MSU rating of an IBM mainframe processor. However, IBM uses MSUs only to gauge software pricing; consequently, you cannot use MSU ratings as a capacity metric. You can use this information for cost analysis and planning, but not for capacity planning or performance reporting.

For more information about IBM sub-capacity pricing, see http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/resources/swprice/subcap/zos.html.


 

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