Capacity Management

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!