Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

Why is the Rolling 4-Hour Average, R4HA, important?

Why should we care about it when talk about CPU tuning? What are other billing ways IBM bills its customers? Please share your detail answers.

It may -- or may not -- be important depending upon your site. IBM allows sites to use sub-capacity pricing; not all sites use it. If your site does not use sub-capacity pricing, then the 4-hour rolling average has no impact on your site. However, if your site does use sub-capacity pricing, then the price paid to IBM depends upon the 4-hour rolling average. Typically a site contracts to use X MSU out of the total capacity of the machine of Y. IBM gets a monthly report of the highest 4-hour rolling average used by the site (there is a reporting tool used by the site to generate the report), and as long as that value is no higher than X, the site pays the contracted price. If the 4-hour rolling average goes over X, then usually the company has to pay additional money to IBM for that month. As far as CPU tuning goes, the 4-hour rolling average is of no consequence; it only matters in terms of monthly pricing.

IBM has a wide variety of pricing models -- way too many to discuss in a forum. For a start, go to http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/resources/swprice/ and start reading to find out about the software pricing.

What are other billing ways IBM bills its customers?

This sounds like some sort of homework question. IBM bills its customers for hardware, software, consulting services, processing services -- there are all sorts of ways IBM bills its customers.