Capacity Management

- Premanand Lotlikar

7th August, 2007

 Agenda
• Introduction
• Objective of Capacity Mgmt
• Basic Concepts
• Benefits
• Relationship with other processes
• Activities in Capacity Mgmt
• Process Control
• Key Performance Indicators
• Cost
• Possible Problems
Introduction
 Objectives
• To consistently provide the required IT
resources at the right time and at the right
cost, aligned with the current and future
requirements of the business
• Needs to understand:
– Expected business developments
– Technical developments
• Important role in determining ROI and cost
 Basic Concepts
• Performance Mgmt: measuring, monitoring and
tuning the performance of the IT infrastructure
components
• Application Sizing: determining the h/w or
network capacity needed to support new or
modified services
• Workload Mgmt: understanding what the various
business drivers are doing and what resources
they require
• Capacity Planning: developing a Capacity plan,
based on Capacity Mgmt DB
 Benefits
• Reduce risks with the existing services (Continuous
Monitoring)
• Reduce risk associated with new or modified services
(Application Sizing)
• Reduced costs
• Reduced business disruption
• More reliable forecasts
• Greater efficiency as demand and supply are balanced
at early stage
• Managed or even reduced capacity related expenditure
• Improved customer relationship
Inputs & Outputs
 Sub-processes in Capacity Mgmt
• Business Capacity Mgmt
– Understand the current and future needs of the business
– InfoProviders (Strategic Plans, Marketing Plans, Trend Analysis)
• Service Capacity Mgmt
– Understand the use of IT services
– Performance and Peak loads need to be understood
– Strong linkages with SLM
• Resource Capacity Mgmt
– Understand the use of IT infrastructure and components
– Organization must be kept abreast of the technological
developments
– Actively monitoring trends also important
 Relationship with other processes
• Incident Mgmt informs Capacity Mgmt
about incidents logged due to capacity
issues
• Capacity Mgmt can provide clues for
Incident Mgmt to assist with the diagnosis
or resolution of capacity problems
 Relationship with other processes
• Change Mgmt:
– Capacity Mgmt provides information about the
need for capacity and the potential impact of a
change on a service
– Information about changes provide input to
the Capacity Plan
– Capacity Mgmt can submit RFC’s
 Relationship with other processes
• Configuration Mgmt:
– Close connection b/w CDB and CMDB
– CDB may form part of CMDB
 Relationship with other processes
• Service Level Mgmt:
– Capacity Mgmt advises SLM about the
feasibility of service levels
– Capacity Mgmt measure and monitors
performance levels and raises the alarm at
the right time
 Relationship with other processes
• IT Service Continuity Mgmt:
– Capacity Mgmt specifies minimum capacity
needed to continue or recover service in case
event of a disaster
 Relationship with other processes
• Availability Mgmt:
– Both are closely connected
– Customer may consider poor service
performance to be equivalent to service
unavailability
 Activities in Capacity Mgmt
• Developing the capacity plan
• Modeling
• Application Sizing
• Monitoring
• Analysis
• Tuning
• Implementation
• Demand Management
• Populating the CDB
 Developing the capacity plan
• Capacity Plan describes the current and
the future requirements for capacity of IT
infrastructure
• Also defines the changes needed to
provide the agreed service levels at an
acceptable cost
• A revised version of the plan should be
produced each year and reviewed
quarterly
 Capacity Plan
• Capacity Plan must contain:
– Performance expectation
– Upgrade points
– Expected costs for upgrades (capital,
recurring, operational, personnel)
– Example Capacity Plan
 Modeling
• Tools range from measuring and estimating
tools to extensive prototyping and testing tools
• Other tools are:
– Rule of thumb
– Linear projection (Trend Analysis)
– Analytical modeling
– Simulation
– Baseline assessment (benchmark)
– Actual System
 Application Sizing
• Considers the resources required to run a
new or changed service
• Particularly relevant during the initial
development stage
• Contributes to the drafting of new or
revised SLA’s
 Monitoring
• Aims to ensure that the agreed service
levels are achieved
• Resources to be monitored
– CPU utilization
– Disk utilization
– Network utilization
– Number of licenses
 Analysis
• Monitored data must be analyzed
• Trend analysis to predict future growth
• Identify potential ‘bottlenecks’
 Tuning
• Tuning optimizes systems for the actual or
expected workload on the basis of
analyzed and interpreted monitoring data
 Implementation
• Objective is to introduce the changed or
new capacity
• This may involve Change Mgmt process
 Demand Management
• Aims to influence the demand for capacity
• It is about controlling and influencing users
demand
• SQL Example
• Can also involve differential charging
Populating the CDB
 Capacity Database
Field Name Description
CapacityItemName Name of item
CapacityItemType Type—for example, service or resource
CapacityItemDescription Free text description
UnitOfMeasurement Measurement units—for example, kilobyte, milliseconds,
or megahertz
UnitCost Standardized financial cost of each unit
MaximumCapacity Maximum possible capacity achievable by item

AlertThreshold Current threshold at which an alert is first generated

ChildHierarchyItems List of capacity items that this item depends on

ParentHierarchyItems List of capacity items that depend on this item

TrendDataTimestamp Timestamp when trend data is collected

TrendData Data value captured
Activities
 Process Control
• Critical Success Factors:
– Accurate business forecast and expectations
– Understanding of the IT strategy and planning
and its accuracy
– Knowledge of current and future technologies
– Cooperation with other processes
– An ability to demonstrate cost effectiveness
 Key Performance Indicators
• Predictability of the customer demand
• Technology
• Cost
• Operations
 Cost
• Purchase of h/w, s/w tools such as
monitoring tools, CDB, trending, modeling,
simulation and reporting tools
• Project Management cost
• Personnel cost
 Possible Problems
• Unrealistic expectations
• Lack of appropriate information
• Supplier input
• Implementation on complex environments
• Determining the appropriate level of
monitoring
• Lack of Management support
Thank you!