Traditionally IBM has sold AS/400s with a small amount of interactive CPW and the remainder of the CPW as batch. Interactive runs at a higher priority than batch for to a shorter interval per interation. The default configuration was 2000 for interactive, 5000 for batch. I forget the unit of measure – it may be micro seconds. That means an interactive job become eligible to be swapped out after 2000 microseconds while a batch job runs 2 1/2 time longer before becoming eligible to be swapperd. Interactive jobs typically run at a higher priority unless someone has modified the config on your machine. This all is designed to keep interactive jobs responding quickly – the goal always being to keep response time under two seconds.

By the way, IBM will allow your machine to consume more than the allotted interactive CPW but with a penalty. For example, if your AS/400 has 100 CPW and it is consuming 130, after a few seconds the system starts a job call CFINT which starts soaking up cycles. Its not doing anything useful – just charging you a “fine” for exceeding the purchased CPW. Once CPW drops to 100 or whatever your licensed, CFINT will start to give back its cycles and return your machine to normal function. IBM also sells an option to make all your CPW available to interactive without penalty. That feature is a bit expensive but totally eliminates the limitations I’ve described above.

Longer running jobs should be submitted to batch, such as reports, complex updates, backups and end-of-day processing, They run more efficiently in this subsystem.

Sorry, I don’t know where to check on the machine to determine the CPW in each subsystem. I’ll bet someone else on this site knows that answer. We just refer to the documentation that come with our system but sometimes that can be rather hard to find.

The only way to look up the interactive and batch rating is by looking for the System Builder red book on the IBM site. The System Builder will show for the model and feature number the interactive and batch CPW ratings as well as other things like max disk, max memory max communication lines, etc.

There are different versions of System Builder depending on the model or processor generation. Look for the latest one by published date and then it will point you to the correct one for the model you have it your model is not listed.

Lovemyi

And if the CPW is low and you think that your machine is slow you may think to upgrade to a higher CPW, means you have to buy a new “feature card” from IBM or other supplier which will cost you a lot. Before that you can check this link http://www.gofaster.us and compare the prices. You will be surprised.

YuVa47

Hey DAN thanks for the reply We own a i550 model with a Power 5 processor and a proc feat code 7463.

Specs from IBM’s website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/systemi/550/index.html

Hello, You are totally right. Some users did take advantage of Fast400 previously. Now you can find more information of another tool that will help your machine reach the total CPW resources for interactive performance purposes.

This product was recently coverd by IT jungle online magazine on this link

http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs010510-story02.html

And you can find mor info in
http://www.gofaster.us