Calculate your consumption of Mainframe Monitoring (DPS)
- Latest Dynatrace
- Concept
- 1-min read
- Published Aug 12, 2025
This page describes how the Mainframe Monitoring DPS capability is consumed and billed. For an overview of the capability, including its main features, see Mainframe Monitoring.
With Mainframe Monitoring:
- You only pay for the active monitoring period (for example, downtimes are not charged).
- You get cost transparency and budget management in Account Management.
- The usage of
Distributed Tracing and 
Services is included with Dynatrace.
No query consumption is generated by these apps.
How consumption is calculated: MSU hours
The unit of measure for Mainframe Monitoring is an MSU hour. Mainframe Monitoring consumption derives MSU hours based on the IBM Tailored Fit Pricing software consumption solution, retrieved per LPAR from SMF type 70 subtype 1 records (actual number of consumed MSUs).
The more MSUs an LPAR has, and the longer Dynatrace monitors it, the higher the MSU-hour consumption.
The billing granularity for MSU-hour consumption is calculated in four 15-minute intervals per hour. If an LPAR is monitored for less than 15 minutes in an interval, MSU-hour consumption is rounded up to 15 minutes before consumption is calculated. The sum of MSU hours of all monitored LPARs represents the total consumption.
Traces included with Mainframe Monitoring
The first 10 days of data retention are always included. Any trace data retained longer than 10 days is charged on a per-Gibibyte basis as Trace Retain.
Metrics included with Mainframe Monitoring
Mainframe Monitoring includes application performance monitoring and related built-in metrics. These do not generate consumption.
Custom metrics generate consumption. They are measured in metric data points and charged as Metrics powered by Grail. For example, custom JMX metrics consume metric data points.
If Metrics powered by Grail does not exist on your rate card, metric data points are charged as Custom Metrics Classic.
Track your consumption
This section describes the different Dynatrace tools that you can use to track your consumption.
Track your consumption with Metrics
Dynatrace provides a usage metric that helps you understand and analyze your MSU-hour consumption. To use this metric, in Data Explorer, enter the following metric key or name in the Search field.
- (DPS) Mainframe Monitoring billing usage
Key:
builtin:billing.mainframe_monitoring.usageDimension: Host (
dt.entity.host)Resolution: 15 min
Description: Total number of MSU hours monitored, counted in 15 min intervals.
Example: Consumption details
You can break down the MSU-hour consumption per LPAR. The example below shows all LPARs that contributed to the consumption in 1-hour intervals within the last 24 hours.
Example: Consumption estimate
Use the IBM Sub-Capacity Reporting Tool (SCRT) report to estimate the required MSU-hour consumption per year.
- In Section C5, check the Reporting Period of the SCRT report. Typically, it contains one month of data.
- In Section N7, sum the Total MSU Consumed value for each LPAR to be monitored.
- If the reporting period is one month, multiply the Total MSU Consumed by 12 months to get annual consumption.
In this example, the three LPARs (S1LP01, S2LP02, and TF1LP1) consumed 99,000 MSU hours in September 2023.
Multiplied by 12 months, this equates to 1,188,000 MSU hours per year.
- This approach might not consider seasonal workload fluctuations, which can lead to deviations in actual consumption.
- Section N7 has been available since IBM SCRT version 25.2. It was released by IBM in December 2017.
Track your consumption and costs in Account Management
You can also track your usage in Account Management. Go to Account Management > Subscription > Overview > Cost and usage details > Usage summary and select the Mainframe Monitoring capability.
Track your consumption and costs via API
You can query metrics via the Environment API - Metrics API v2.