December 20, 2011

Lower Costs with the New Titan z114 Processor

On November 13, 2011, CIT replaced the Titan z9-BC with a new, state-of-the-art z114-BC mainframe server. This new server offers greater economies of scale, which allows CIT to pass the cost savings of running virtual mainframe operations to customers. During this time of severe budget constraints, the overall goal for the CIT mainframe service is to reduce our customers' costs through technology refreshes and productivity improvements.

Testing and analysis

When the new z114 mainframe was installed at CIT, we began a comprehensive benchmark analysis to assess the revenue impact to CIT. We ran identical batch processing workloads on the old and new processors and carefully examined the performance data from customer applications executed on the new processor. Our benchmark tests indicated that the new processor significantly reduced the amount of CPU time, and our review of performance data using the production workloads migrated to the new machine confirmed this finding.

Cost savings

To continue supporting the service, CPU Rates for the faster z114 processor will be adjusted up by 38%. However, because the new processor significantly reduces the amount of CPU time required for a given workload, typical customers will see a savings of about 20%.

The table below compares the costs of a benchmark batch job, with over 100 job steps, running on the old and new processors during prime shift. In this case, running the job on the new z114 BC server yields a savings of nearly 22% for the customer.

Benchmark Cost Savings for Identical Batch Workload: z9-BC vs z114-BC

Processor	CPU Seconds	Rate	Total Charge
Z9-BC Batch CPU Seconds (Prime Shift)	257.78	$2.47	$ 621.95
Z114-BC Batch CPU Seconds (Prime Shift)	107.20	$4.75	$ 509.20
Savings for Customer on z114-BC			($ 112.75)

The details on the adjusted rates are available at the Data Center Rates page at http://cit.nih.gov/ServiceCatalog/DataCenterRates.htm. The new rates are effective with the December 2011 billing period and will be reflected on the December invoices.

Note: Titan Mainframe services operate on a cost-recovery foundation, with our rates based on system usage. A customer submitting a batch job, executing a TSO session, accessing an online application, or using a database will be charged, in part, on how many CPU seconds are consumed.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding these adjustments, please contact the NIH IT Service Desk at 301-496-HELP (301-496-4357), 866-319-4357 (toll free) or 301-496-8294 (TTY) and ask to speak to a Titan consultant.