Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

Accounting is critical for information technology budgeting and chargeback. Traditional accounting in UNIX/Linux systems is known as process accounting, in which an accounting record is created when a process ends. System administrators typically aggregate accounting records based on individual users or groups. As Web and application servers along with databases handle requests and transactions for multiple entities in various Web applications and services, LPAR accounting and transaction accounting become increasingly critical for service providers in shared resource environments. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a J2EE accounting application for resource usage metering. For process accounting the resulting system can generate usage reports by projects, by groups, by users, by commands, or by a combination of these identifiers. For dynamically changing partitions it generates reports for shared resources including CPUs, memories, disks, file systems, and network interfaces. For transaction accounting it generates reports based on account classes provided that applications are instrumented. It is the first known J2EE accounting application for UNIX/Linux transaction accounting.

REFERENCES

• 1: V. G. Hazlewood, "Unix Accounting Magic," Sys Admin, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 11 -- 13, February 1998.
• 2: Silicon Graphics Inc., "Comprehensive System Accounting," Chapter 5, IRIX Admin: Resource Administration, Document 007-3700-015, July 2003.
• 3: Sun Microsystems, "Extended Accounting," Chapter 7, System Administration Guide: Resource Management and Network Services. Part number 806-4076-10, 2002.
• 4: L. Browning, "Advanced Accounting for AIX 5L Version 5.3," IBM White Paper, July 2004, at <u>http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/whitepapers/aix_accounting.pdf.</u>
• 5: IBM, "Understanding the Advanced Accounting subsystem," IBM document SC23-4882-00, August 2004.
• 6: IBM, "Dynamic Logical Partitioning in IBM eServer pSeries," <u>http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/whitepapers/dlpar.pdf</u>, IBM White Paper, October 2002.
• 7: Thomas Erl, Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004
• 8: Mark W. Johnson, Monitoring and Diagnosing Application Response Time with ARM, Proceedings of the IEEE Third International Workshop on Systems Management, p.4, April 22-24, 1998
• 9: The Open Group, "System Management: Application Response Measurement (ARM) API," Open Group Technical Standard, July 1998.
• 10: The Open Group, "Application Manageability and Quality of Service," <u>http://www.opengroup.org/qos/app-manageability/.</u>
• 11: IBM, "IBM Virtualization Engine: IBM Enterprise Workload Manager," Version 1, Release 1, IBM Manual, August 2004.
• 12: The Open Group, "Application Response Measurement (ARM) Issue 4.0 -- C Binding," Open Group Technical Standard, 2003.
• 13: Package "Advanced Accounting Utilities for AIX," IBM AlphaWorks, package available for download at <u>http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/aaautilities.</u>

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.2 Installation Management

General Terms:
Management, Measurement

Keywords:
ARM transactions, process accounting, project accounting, resource usage, transaction accounting