On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 4:51 AM, Jim Bohnsack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>  Writing the accounting code to handle the accounting records is no small
> task.  I did it in the '80's and would share it except that that was 2 jobs
> ago and I almost certainly didn't keep any of it to share.

Writing code to process VM account records is only part of the job
(and doing it in such a way that the auditors accept it to feed into
the company's financial systems is probably the hardest part of it).
Unfortunately account records don't provide data on main memory usage
(the hardest part with Linux on z/VM right now). You probably need the
performance monitor to help you out there.

But in every installation where I have seen usage based accounting,
customers argued the validity because they "had not done anything
special to justify the increased charges"  And pointing at a virtual
80-column punch card with numbers does not convince them. It is very
helpful at that point to have reports of the performance monitor so
you can tell them exactly which user started what process in Linux and
how long it ran and what it used.

One installation found it very educational to have a online per-minute
overview of the charges per server (or group of servers). It showed
the application developers why we told them to use a text-based
installer rather than the GUI-based, for example.

Rob
-- 
Rob van der Heij
Velocity Software
http://www.velocitysoftware.com/

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