13. RESOURCE COMPONENT ANALYSIS › 13.1 Analysis using CA MICS files › 13.1.6 Case Study › 13.1.6.1 Processor Resource Usage

13.1.6.1 Processor Resource Usage

This case study illustrates how you can perform a preliminary
analysis of processor usage data and better understand which
general workloads appear to influence the overall system
usage.  This is a simple exploratory data step that can help
direct other, more detailed analyses.  Since capacity
planning is often done in a very individualized fashion and
the actuals metrics vary among sites, it is important to have
tools that are flexible and permit you to choose among a
variety of metrics, measurements and methods to achieve the
best outcome.

DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTUAL STUDY

Knowledge gained from this and similar limited analyses can
help you choose which metrics to employ in more detailed
studies.  For example, you might decide that simple usage
data as depicted here is too limited to be reliable and that
data from the WLMSECxx or related files would be required.
But for quick studies and simple "back of the envelope"
analyses, the method employed here may be sufficient.

APPLICATION OF CONCEPTUAL STUDY

The systems being examined are SYS1 and SYS2 (the CA MICS
SYSID values). These systems process varied workloads, which
can be loosely grouped together as BATCH, TSO, STC and USS.
They are also used for both system development and
non-scheduled production, and serve a number of remotely
located groups.  The hardware platforms have changed over
time and both LPARs reside on a z-900 based CEC executing
z-OS version 1.4.

The DETAIL HARCPU data from a typical day was chosen and the
analyses performed.  The analysis report was reviewed and the
decision made to drop the 'average' data elements (CPUAVx) in
favor of the 'maximum' values (CPUMXx). The query was then
reexecuted and the results noted.

The next sections explore the results of the report that is
generated from the Relative Importance Analysis we developed
for the workload usage study:

     1 - Control Parameters
     2 - Relative Importance Analysis Report