Using Job Accounting

From: Brian Kautz To: All

Management at my firm would like to implement some form of job accounting. We have three discrete locations, all running off of a central AS/400 D20. Management would like to accumulate usage time for each of the three plants. The time would then be multiplied by a usage rate and inter-company charges filed. We are mostly interested in tracking two types of hours: log-on time and CPU time. What is the easiest way to accomplish this? Is it through the systems job accounting or are there other easier ways?

How have other companies arrived at chargeback rates?

From: Tim Johnston To: Brian Kautz

Have you looked at Ernie Malaga's article on job accounting? It ran in the October 1992 issue. I have used it, not to charge back, but to see who was using and abusing the system. Much to my dismay, I was the clear culprit in using the system. My operator printed, hands down, the most.

From: Ernie Malaga To: Tim Johnston

That's to be expected, since IS people spend so much time at their terminals, and many times they start jobs for other users (an arrangement of which the Job Accounting system knows nothing). When evaluating use/abuse of the system, you need to disregard all IS personnel, no matter how much they seem to use the machine.

From: Brian Kautz To: Tim Johnston

I have read the article and the others published earlier on journaling (January and February 1992). Is there any significant performance hit? Is there anything I must be aware of with regard to save/restore strategy changes once I am using journaling as my system watchdog? I have to thank MC again for such good articles on meaningful topics!

From: Tim Johnston To: Brian Kautz

I don't have performance tools, so I will have to give you a "by the seat of my pants" answer. In my opinion, no. I have not noticed any more, or longer, performance degradation hits than normal. And I can usually attribute that to a job which is doing a lot of non-DB paging and using lots of CPU time. About the save/restore strategy, make sure that the receiver(s) are in a library that you do your normal backup on, whether it is Save Changed Objects (SAVCHGOBJ), or Save Library (SAVLIB), or whatever flops your mop. The point being, make sure it is backed up.

From: Brian Kautz To: Tim Johnston

Thanks for your help. I have the accounting codes running and am using the Report Job Accounting (RPTJOBACG) command from MC. My boss (the company controller) loves the results. Should be billing users back any moment now.