Managing your IBM z System licensing charges - Monthly license charge components ( 1 of 5)

Monthly license charge components
z System license charges are a large component of the IT budget so this blog series will be looking at what you can do to manage those costs efficiently. I'll be covering how to stay on top of the charges throughout the month, what safeguards are in place to control the cost and what potential solutions, remedies and actions can be taken.

I'll start with a look at the type of license charges.

Types of License Charges

•        MLC or WLC (Monthly or Workload License Charges)

–       The charge is based upon usage of an LPAR

–       Aggregates usage for the complete environment

–       MSUs of z Systems Subsystem Components consumed

When you elect WLC pricing for a particular operating system on a CPC, all of that operating system family's MLC products are licensed under WLC on that CPC. Sub-capacity eligible MLC products are called Variable Workload License Charges (VWLC) products. Non-sub-capacity eligible MLC products are called Flat Workload License Charges (FWLC) products and their pricing is a fixed monthly charge unrelated to the capacity of the CPC on which they run.

•        CMLC (Country Multiplex License Charges) or CMP (Country Multiplex Pricing)

–       Sub-capacity offering that allows clients to use their z Systems capacity within a given country with the objective of creating a flexible, country-wide z Systems platform.

Clients can configure and balance workloads more easily without the constraints of Sysplex aggregation rules and many of the limitations of previous reporting methodologies.

A Multiplex is the collection of all eligible IBM z Systems machines or Sysplexes or both within a single country, measured as one machine for purposes of software sub-capacity reporting.

On Wednesday I'll be looking at the types of license in more detail. In the meantime don’t forget to sign up for my webinar ‘Top 5 z Systems^® Capacity Issues on September 13^th https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

Charles Johnson

Principal Consultant

Top 5 z System Capacity Issues

As Information Technology continues to evolve within enterprises, such as cloud and virtualization, there is one constant in the IT infrastructure that doesn’t change.  That constant is the z Systems^® mainframe. 

Many organizations continue to rely on the mainframe for the heavy lifting of data in various business applications.  The subsystem components of CICS, DB2, MQ Series and IMS continue to feed not only legacy applications but also new multi-tier applications.  As the mainframe operating system continues to develop, you are seeing more functionality added to provide a better user experience. 

With all these changes and innovations, there are challenges that need consideration relating to Capacity Management on the mainframe.

I'll be running a webinar on September 13 which will provide information to assist you, discussing  the Top 5 Performance and Capacity Management Challenges for IBM z Systems^®.

Some of the topics I'll be covering are:

• What has happened in the past 12 months with the mainframe?
• How are organizations managing the mainframe capacity?
• The Top 5 performance and capacity z Systems® challenges facing organizations
• The impact of the Cloud on mainframe
• What is new with the z14

Register for your place now
https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

Charles Johnson
Principal Consultant

No one should forget the mainframe

Once seen as the lumbering beast in the background, now acknowledged by those in the know as the fastest, most secure, tools rich large server there is. Metron’s Acquire for zOS data capture facility is a non-intrusive, zero impact performance data capture tool, gathering relevant performance and capacity metrics from SMF/RMF records.

It’s also child’s play to implement for anyone with a zOS background.

Our athene^® ES/1 offers a range of features to enable you to analyze z/OS performance across your entire estate, report and create trends of behavior and analytically model future scenarios to optimize configurations and expenditure.

athene^® ES/1 allows an enterprise to optimize on-going capacity, minimize over-spending on hardware, avoid the costs of performance crises, guarantee service levels, and alert on trends to know when a capacity issue will begin to emerge.
athene^® ES/1 modelling capabilities help you to avoid potential performance problems and evaluate tuning and management strategies well in advance, not in crisis mode.

We’re offering one FREE System z Capacity Audit and Projection service per organization for a limited period.

To use the download to collect and return data for a FREE z/OS Capacity Audit and Projection visit 

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/consulting/capacity-management-consulting.html

Charles Johnson

Principal Consultant

Capacity Management: Is the mainframe still your most mission-critical server?(2 of 7)

A friend of mine bought a 20-foot boat last summer so he could take his family tubing, water skiing, and fishing.  It’s fast, fairly easy to operate, and relatively inexpensive to fix and maintain.  One person can do most of the tasks required to get the boat in and out of the water and it doesn’t take long to learn how to do most tasks involving a small craft like his.

This summer, my family is planning on spending a week’s vacation on a cruise liner.  In doing some research, I found that the boat, at top speed, is only half as fast as my friend’s 20-foot boat and common sense (and a very long 1996 movie) tells me that the ship can’t turn nearly as quickly in the water.   And it takes thousands of people to make a cruise ship do what it does, from deck hands and entertainment staff all the way up through the ship’s captain.

In other words, a novice may be able to keep a speedboat running, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to operate a cruise liner.  But operated well, a cruise liner is a smoothly operated vessel that will make thousands of people satisfied customers.

Think of the mainframe as that cruise liner.  Many organizations have invested a lot of time and money into making sure that the mainframes are operating at peak efficiency – much of that knowledge, however, is held within long-tenured, very experienced employees who may be thinking about buying their own fishing boats and heading into retirement.

More specifically, does the end of working life for the generation of ‘baby boomers’ mean problems for the many businesses for which the mainframe is still the most mission-critical server?

The story sounds dire, but it doesn’t have to be.  We’ll pick up on Wednesday and talk about a way to keep crucial mainframe expertise in place even when your mainframe experts are no longer an email or phone call away.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer

Capacity management, The view from the top (1 of 7)

Throughout the year, I get the opportunity to talk to many IT professionals.  Some of them are quite seasoned and some of them are recent graduates filling one of their first professional roles.  Some are junior analysts, others are senior technicians and planners, and a few are the managers and executives of the organization.

The conversations I have with those people can be quite different, depending on their roles with the organization. 

When I talk to technicians, I tend to talk more about product and how the effective use of a Capacity Management product can make them more efficient and able to achieve results quicker and easier.

When I talk to a senior manager, VP, or CIO, I’m focused more on how we can help them achieve business objectives – a subtle difference, but an important one.  Senior managers in general are very focused on outcomes and less focused on the mechanisms for achieving those outcomes.

One of my favorite conversations with a CIO resulted in him telling me that anyone he talks to must answer the question, “How will doing business with you save me money?”  And that CIO was right – any investment that a company makes in software, hardware, or other technology has to, in one way or another, save or make the company money.

This blog series will focus on the CIO or any senior strategy decider in an organization that relies on mainframes to perform critical business functions.

Come back on Monday and we’ll talk about a problem faced by many CIOs and other decision-makers in mainframe organizations – the aging and retirements of valued baby-boomer employees who hold much of the knowledge about how to keep the mainframe (and hence much of IT) running at peak effectiveness.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer