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From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.misc
Subject: Re: computer charge back (long)
Message-ID: <512@laic.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 89 19:51:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: laic.512
Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson)
Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 18

You might want to check that the algorithm you use for CPU charge back
is reasonable.  Back at school, we had these systems on UNIX and VMS,
and students in a class automatically got a $100 account.  On UNIX,
the chargeback seemed pretty much what I expected (eg, if I did more
compiles, I got charged more...).  However, on the VMS machines, the
algorithm used initially had some problems (later fixed).  Apparently,
either system cpu, io overhead, or connect time was being charged.
The result was that if you were logged in at noon, you ended up paying
about 25% more than if you did the same thing at midnight (we tested
this).  These machines were VERY overloaded, such that the connect
time for these two times were 1 hour vs. about 10 minutes.  Of course
we didn't care since it wasn't our money, but when we worked at night,
we were that much less stressed to get things to work right the first
time (compared to the other people yelling "I only have $4.15 left,
I'll never make it!").

Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
	Can you "Spot the Looney"?