Guest post by Bronna Shapiro, Solutions Marketing Manager

Fully loaded mainframe processing can be expensive. IT organizations rarely have extra money to spend, and our economy has every shop tightening its belt.

So when a problem comes along, you must zIIP it.

Offloading work to zIIP engines can result in savings of up to $7,000 per MIPS because software running on specialty engines is exempt from related charges such as license costs, upgrades, and maintenance fees.

The choice seems obvious: maximize the use of specialty engines to reduce cost and free up general purpose processors for other work. However, because only certain types of processing are eligible to execute on these specialized engines, you must identify which workloads are eligible for zIIP processing and then move those workloads. BMC products can help guide you in identify the best candidates for using zIIPs.

Offloading CPU cycles to zIIPs during peak hours will likely give you the best bang for your buck. Offloading work overnight, when you have processing capacity available, may not provide significant payback.

BMC products automatically exploit zIIPs. In one case, a customer was able to reduce 50% of the MIPS required for monitoring z/OS.

Remember that everything comes at a cost. Look at your heaviest workloads and capacity needs. Consider the costs of purchasing the zIIP engines and rewriting applications to take advantage of them. Each zIIP you install still requires maintenance and power. Work with your vendors to understand what products are most suited for zIIPs. Weigh the costs against the potential savings.

And when appropriate, zIIP it. zIIP it good.