Avoid MLC Charges on Unintended Usage Data Using SMF 89 Records

The SMF 89 record type stores the CPU of each registered Sub-Capacity product over time. This is useful for finding out:

• which address spaces are registering which products on which systems
• product version
• product qualifiers (which relates to subsystem names for DB2 and MQ and components for IMS)
• CPU that is consumed by each product (used in specialized licensing programs like zCAP)

Tracking Software Version Upgrade Progress

One practical use of the SMF 89 data is to track the progress of a migration of a software version upgrade. As shown in the video, when a migration is underway from CICS version 5.3 To 5.5, the SMF 89 records give us insight into where the activity is occurring. In the video we see that most of the activity is happening on 5.5, but some activity is still happening on 5.3. This data also makes it easy to identify which the CICS regions are executing which versions.

Avoid MLC Charges on Unintended Usage

Another practical use of SMF 89 data is to help avoid being charged MLC costs for unintended data usage. Under MLC rules, any execution of a product on a particular system in a given hour causes all the MSUs for that system to be chargeable for that product. There can be instances when controls to limit execution of products to specified systems don’t work as intended.

We’ve seen TSO users executing the IMS BTS batch terminal simulator capability for unit testing result in IMS to be charged for MSUs on an unintended system. So usage data by product in the SMF 30 Address Space Records can be helpful in tracking down such unintended usage.