Cost analysis and capacity planning are constants for managers of mainframe-based data centres. The IT director must confirm the computing resources an organisation needs, when these are needed, and justify why the cost estimates regularly change. 

Through capacity planning, IT organizations are assessing the service levels defined by the customer that they provide. To optimise hardware and software utilization, it must be ensured that the workloads are within the size and capacity of the computer configuration used. 

Measurement of workload and determination of the utilization is the basis for capacity planning. Information on resource consumption, workload, service, users, etc. is taken from logs provided by z/OS. SMF-Tracker delivers the necessary data for cost allocation and capacity planning, providing the necessary tools in the evaluation, interpretation and presentation of this data. 

Benefits

• Presents only the relevant information for accounting and capacity planning
• Easy integration to your environment
• Reduced manual effort with automated processing and reports
• SQL can be used to process the data
• Low license cost

 Features 

• Extracts all SMF data used for accounting and capacity planning
• Stores the extracted data in DB2 tables
• Offers a graphical component to present the data
• Option to extract data from IMF log
• Optional component to integrate your own business logic

SMF-Tracker offers significant benefits:

• It extracts only the information which is required for accounting or capacity purposes and standardizes the presentation of various fields.
• It offers a series of functions for further processing of the extracted data.
• It uses modern resources to process the data: C programs, DB2 tables, SQL, Java, graphical output on desktop, etc.
• The output in DB2 tables simplifies the integration or transfer to secondary applications.
• SMF-Tracker reduces CPU-overhead and runtime during the extraction process, through its efficient program architecture.

How does SMF-Tracker work? 

The task comprises of three parts: 

• Data extraction from logs
• Allocation of recorded resource consumption to clients, cost centers, etc.
• Preparation and graphical representation SMF-Tracker consists of the following three components:

Extractor extracts data from logs, homogenizes the fields (e.g. all times are scaled to seconds) and writes to DB2 tables Correlator maps the resource consumption recorded by extractor to the organizational structure of the company - departments, cost centers, clients, etc. 

The Correlator requires some customization work during implementation dependant on the company environment. 

Viewer selects and presents tables and graphs on a workstation/PC, and communicates with DB2 via a COM server.

Information and Data Sources of Tracker For Accounting Tracker calculates: CPU time per batch job, CPU time per CICS transaction, including CPU time under DB2; the CPU time per IMS transaction; as well as the number of printed pages and rows per job, per OUTPUTCLASS and per OUTPUT subsystem. 

For Capacity Planning Tracker determines CPU utilization, resource consumption per Service Class and the quality of goal fulfillment according to "Goals".

The data necessary for this originates from SMF and IMF logs.