CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

Capacity Management- Goal

To ensure that cost justifiable IT Capacity always exists and that it is
matched to the current and future identified needs of the business

Good Capacity Management Ensures -- NO SURPRISES

To ensure Right Capacity, at Right cost is always

available to meet the current & identified future
needs of the business such that the Agreed IT
Service Levels are achieved at the right time
Why Capacity Management?
 which components to upgrade (i.e. more memory, faster storage
devices, faster processors, greater bandwidth)
 when to upgrade – ideally this is not too early, resulting in expensive
over-Capacity, nor too late, resulting in bottle-necks, inconsistent
performance and ultimately Customer dissatisfaction and lost business
opportunities
 how much the upgrade will cost – the forecasting and planning
elements of Capacity Management feed into budgetary lifecycles,
ensuring planned investment.
 Monitor the performance and throughput of IT services
 Tuning activities to make efficient use of resources
 Understand the current demands for IT services and produce
forecasts for future requirements
 Help to influence demands for IT resources
 Production of a Capacity Plan predicting the IT resources needed to
achieve agreed or proposed service levels
 Capacity Management- Scope
 All Hardware
 All networking equipment
 All peripherals
 All software
 Human resources

Business requirements of the organisation should be the driving force for

Capacity Management
Capacity Management- Balance

Cost against Capacity –Need to ensure that processing Capacity that is

purchased is not only cost justifiable in terms of business need, but also the
need to make the most efficient use of those resources

Supply against Demand – Ensure that the available supply of processing

power matches the demands made on it by the business, both now and in
the future; it may also be necessary to manage or influence the demand for
a particular resource.
Capacity Management- Process
 Capacity Management: Sub-Process
Business Capacity management (BCM)
 - Ensuring future business requirements for IT services are considered
and matched to capability
Service Capacity Management (SCM)
 - Managing performance of IT services delivered to customers and
documented in SLAs
Resource Capacity management (RCM)
 - Management of components ensuring that all resources are
monitored & measured
 Business Capacity Management
 Planning Future Business requirements
 Requires a knowledge of…..
 Existing Service Levels, SLA’s
 Future service levels and SLR’s
 Business Plan and Capacity Plan
 Modelling Techniques
 Analytical
 Simulation
 Trending
 Baselining
 Application Sizing
 Service Capacity Management
Monitors and Measures services

Requires a knowledge of …..

•Service Levels and SLAs
•Service throughput and performance
•Tuning and demand management
Resource Capacity Management
Management of Components of IT Infrastructure
Requires a knowledge of …..
 Current technology and utilisation
 Future alternative technologies
 Resilience of systems and services
Capacity Management Database
 Forms the basis for the production of all Capacity
management reporting
 May consist of many physical data stores covering:
- Business data
- Service data
- Technical data
- Financial data
- Utilisation data
 May form part of the CMDB
Capacity Management- Activities
Capacity Management-Activities
 Monitoring
 Analysis
 Tuning
 Implementation
 Storage of capacity management data
 Demand management
 Modeling
 Application sizing
 Production and periodic revision of capacity plan
CM- Iterative Activities
Monitoring
Utilisation of each resource and service is monitored on an on-going basis to ensure the
optimum use of the hardware and software resources, that all agreed service levels can
be achieved, and that business volumes are as expected

Typical monitored data includes:

•CPU utilisation
•memory utilisation
•% CPU per transaction type
•IO rates (physical and buffer) and device utilisation
•queue length (maximum and average)
•file store utilisation
•transactions
•transactions per second (maximum and average)
•transaction response time
•batch duration profiles
•number of hits
•number of log-ons and concurrent Users
•number of network nodes in use (e.g. network devices, PCs, servers etc).
Analysis
The data collected from the monitoring should be
analysed to identify trends from which the normal
utilisation and service level, or baseline, can be
established.
By regular monitoring and comparison with this
baseline, exception conditions in the utilisation of
individual components or service thresholds can be
defined, and breaches or near misses in the SLAs can be
reported upon.
Data can be used to predict future resource usage, or to
monitor actual business growth against predicted
growth.
 Tuning
The analysis of the monitored data may identify areas of the configuration that could be
tuned to better utilise the system resource or improve the performance of the particular
service.

Tuning techniques that are of assistance include:

•balancing workloads – transactions may arrive at the host or server at a particular

gateway, depending where the transaction was initiated; balancing the ratio of initiation
points to gateways can provide tuning benefits
•balancing disk traffic – storing data on disk efficiently and strategically, e.g. striping
data across many spindles may reduce data contention
•efficient use of memory – may include looking to utilise more or less memory
depending upon the circumstances.
Demand Management
Demand Management is to influence the demand for
computing resource and the use of that resource
Manages user’s demands on the system by influencing
behavior
 Differential Charging
 Education/Training
 Time outs
Modeling
Predict the behaviour of IT Services under a given volume
and variety of work. Modeling is an activity that can be used
to beneficial effect in any of the sub-processes of Capacity
Management.
 Trend Analysis
 Analytical Modeling
 Simulation
 Prototype
 Baseline Modeling
Sizing
The primary objective of application sizing is to estimate
the resource requirements to support a proposed
application Change or new application, to ensure that it
meets its required service levels.
 Application sizing has a finite life-span.
 It is initiated at the Project Initiation stage for a new application or when
there is a major Change of an existing application, and is completed when
the application is accepted into the operational environment.
Capacity Plan
 Introduction
 Scope of Plan
 Assumptions Made
 Service Summary
 Current
 Forecasted
 Resource Summary
 Current
 Forecasted
 Options of Service Improvement
 Implications of Failure
 Cost Models
 Recommendations
Memorize
 Goal
– Right amount, right time, efficiently and cost
effectively
 Activities - From Business Needs to Resources
– Business Capacity Management
– Service Capacity Management
– Resource Management
– Demand Management
– Best Value for Money – Monitoring etc.
– Capacity Planning
– Capacity Database
 Application Sizing and Modelling
 Defining and monitoring thresholds