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DASD-Storage
KOMAND DASD Accounting and Management System
The KOMAND DASD Accounting and Management System (DAMS) is a utilization and billing system for Direct Access Storage Devices. DASD storage hardware and software makes up a large portion of the on-going expense of today’s data centers. It is essential for a data center manager to know who (business units) or what (products/applications) is driving these costs. The most typical method for tracking and charging DASD usage is to use a daily scan of the DASD Volume Table of Contents (VTOC).
A VTOC scan of all DASD devices will give a “snapshot” of what space is allocated to who at that particular instant. The problem is a VTOC scan doesn’t show what space was being used an hour before or even a minute before. Likewise, it doesn’t account for space allocated a minute later.
KOMAND DAMS not only offers a VTOC scan, but also a much more accurate solution. KOMAND DAMS can account for DASD space by tracking all data sets allocated, extended, released, renamed, and/or scratched. This allows the most equitable form of disk space charging because it tracks all DASD space changes over a period of time and relates these charges to a cost center (shown below).
Detail of data set charges by user cost center.
Both costing methods can track and charge for HSM and SMS data sets. Both methods can also derive charging rates and the billing account from a choice of several tables. These tables are listed below in order of interrogation:
- Data set name table – searches by the full data set name
- Data set qualifier table – searches by any high level portion of the data set name
- Volume – searches by the volume serial number of the volume to be charged
- Device type table – searches by the DASD device type to be charged
“Common” Rate Table allows the system administrator to set resource rates for KOMAND DAMS and all of the Charging Systems from one location. In addition to rates, this table allows users to convert usage measurements from track/hours to mega-byte/days or megabyte/weeks.
Table maintenance may be performed on the host through the ISPF Panel System or the graphical user interface. It may also be performed from a PC through the KOMAND Information Manager (KIM) running on a Windows 95/98 or Windows NT system.
The billing account number may optionally be obtained from the job card of the allocating job instead of the above tables.
The main output of KOMAND DAMS is a file of debit records summarized at the account level by DASD device type. This debit file is intended to be input to KOMAND FMS where it can be merged with other enterprise-wide charges to produce consolidated invoices and other financial reports.
As KOMAND DAMS produces summary records for billing, a history file may optionally be kept for detailed reporting down to the individual data set level.
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