ellen@calgary.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ellen Salmon) (08/11/90)
Our site just "accepted" a Cray Y-MP8/432 running UNICOS. Management is trying to set up acceptable accounting policies for our users (about 1200 space and Earth science researchers). We hope to have some people at the accounting birds-of-a-feather session at the Oct. 1-5 '90 Cray User Group meeting in Austin, but we need some info now. We're interested in how other sites charge for Cray resource usage. I've listed a few specific questions below. To reduce network traffic, please reply directly to me--I'll be happy to post a summary to the net if there's interest. (Maybe this info would also be helpful at the accounting BOF?) --What sort of weighting or charging algorithms do you use with UNICOS? --What resources (other than CPU) are 'important' to charge for? --Do you charge for space used in storing disk files? --Do you charge differently for multitasking than for single-processor use? Does your charging encourage/discourage multitasking? --Do you charge for memory usage? Do your charges discourage having a single-processor job use more than its share of total memory (e.g., using more than 1/4 total memory on a 4 CPU machine) ? --Do you charge a premium for interactive use (to encourage batch)? --We run CA/JARS on our IBM 3081(MVS) system, incorporating accounting data from our IBM (and clone) mainframes, CDC Cyber 205, and ETA 10. We'll soon be adding UNICOS data to the accounting soup. Does anyone else take this (or a similar) approach? Thanks very much for your help-- Ellen Salmon, ST Systems Corp. <xrems@scfvm.gsfc.nasa.gov> c/o NASA Ctr for Computational Sciences, NASA/GSFC Code 932, Greenbelt, MD 20771