The VM Interface › Reporting Component › VM Accounting Versus Batch Accounting

VM Accounting Versus Batch Accounting

The accounting data collected by VM is primarily oriented towards overall system operation. Data is collected for each virtual machine and represents total resource usage by each virtual machine. An individual virtual machine may be an OS machine, a VSE machine, or a CMS machine.

For CMS users, the VM data is the only accounting data. If you want to report on overall system use and performance, it may be appropriate to use the VM accounting data for all virtual machines. For billing purposes, though, you may instead consider using VM accounting data for CMS users, but still use SMF and/or POWER/VS accounting data for users of your guest batch systems.

The VM Interface puts VM data into the same record format used for SMF and POWER/VS data. Whenever possible, comparable data is in the same fields. This makes it easy to mix VM data and batch accounting data in a single report.

Some ideas for designing mixed-data reports:

• You can reject VM accounting data on the batch machines using the User Accounting Table.
• With the User Accounting Table, you can insert CPU IDs that differentiate billable and nonbillable usage.
• The grouping feature can select or reject data to keep only the data appropriate for each report.