2. Planning for Installation and Use of CA MICS › 2.2 Preparing Your Site For CA MICS › 2.2.2 Resource Planning for CA MICS › 2.2.2.1 Computer Resource Requirements

2.2.2.1 Computer Resource Requirements

The computing resources required to operate CA MICS on an
ongoing basis are a function of the following:

o   The number of installations and/or CPUs encompassed in
    the CA MICS database(s)

o   The CA MICS products used

o   The volume of work processed in terms of number of users,
    commands, jobs, steps, etc.

o   The CA MICS processing options selected, including the
    use of SAS compression facilities, internal step restart,
    and/or incremental update

o   The number of Database Units defined in the complex.

CA MICS is a highly customizable system, giving you the
option to choose the optimum processing approach for your
installation.  In many cases, you will make tradeoffs
depending on your specific requirements.

o   You can use SAS compression facilities to reduce DASD
    space requirements; however, some additional CPU
    resources will be required for compressing and
    de-compressing data records.

o   CA MICS CPU resource usage is directly related to the
    volume of data (or number of observations) retained in
    the CA MICS database.  CA MICS facilities let you easily
    control database content, enabling a logical, and
    controlled trade-off between CPU resource usage and
    database granularity.

o   You have total flexibility for assigning account code
    definitions to ensure adequate data granularity while
    controlling the volume of data retained in the
    CA MICS online and archive database files.  In
    addition, CA MICS timespan masking facilities let you
    reduce data granularity at higher timespans by
    dropping selected account codes from the file key
    structure.

o   You have many options for tailoring the database to
    drop measurements and metrics of lesser value to your
    installation thereby reducing database update
    resource requirements.  Measurement elements and/or
    entire database files may be dropped for a single
    timespan, or for the entire database as needed to
    meet your specific requirements.

o   Internal step restart facilities provide an "insurance
    policy" against processing failures whereby you pay a
    small daily premium (i.e., increased resource usage) for
    checkpoint/restart processing that lets you resume
    processing near the point of failure, saving the expense
    of repeating previously completed processing.

o   Incremental update facilities let you spread CA MICS
    database update processing over multiple, smaller updates
    throughout the day.  Due to the cost of managing and
    accumulating the multiple incremental database updates,
    using incremental update facilities will increase total
    resource consumption; however, it also dramatically
    reduces end-of-day processing, increases parallelism
    across products, and can enable you to process more input
    data than may be practical for processing in a single
    daily database update process.