topic Re: What's the formulae to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring? in Open Q&A

What's the formula to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring?

Chanti — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:35:15 GMT

Hi All,

Can anyone provide me how Dynatrace calculates the license for Z/OS Mainframe monitoring? What are the prerequisite needed to calculate license. Is that consumption of MSU hours for all LPARs alone sufficient to calculate? Please help to estimate the license report.

Re: What's the formulae to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring?

t_pawlak — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:50:40 GMT

Hi,
Mainframe Monitoring does not consume Host Units.
You can calculate it, using this formula:

Per Lpar

MSU-hours = sum of actually consumed MSUs over monitoring time

Total Dynatrace consumption:

Total MSU-hours = sum of MSU-hours across all monitored LPARs

Based on SMF Type 70 Subtype 1

15-minute billing granularity

Any activity within a 15-minute interval is fully billed

Only active monitoring time is charged

How to estimate it:

IBM SCRT report
- Section C5 – reporting period
- Section N7 – Total MSU Consumed per LPAR
List of monitored LPARs
Reporting period length (usually 1 month).

All details you can find here:
https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/license/capabilities/app-infra-observability/mainframe

Of course, you can track consumption in Dynatrace as well:

builtin:billing.mainframe_monitoring.usage

Re: What's the formulae to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring?

Chanti — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 16:33:03 GMT

Hey Pawlak,

That's perfect. But What are the prerequisite we needed here to calculate license? Having data of peak consumption of MSU hours alone sufficient to calculate license?

Re: What's the formulae to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring?

Chanti — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:14:54 GMT

One quick question. Regarding the Trace inclusion Mainframe monitoring billing. Trace calculated in GB right actually whether it is inside Mainframe or Outside mainframe?

I believe Mainframe storage is calculated in GB. MSU is the CPU computation of LPARs.

Please confirm whether this storage will be retained in the mainframe or it will be taken out of the mainframe?

Re: What's the formulae to calculate the Dynatrace license for z/os mainframe monitoring?

t_pawlak — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:25:33 GMT

Hi,
MSU covers CPU usage on z/OS, while trace data is stored outside the mainframe in Dynatrace. Traces up to 10 days are included, and longer retention is billed per GB.