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Capacity Management

Revision as of 13:51, 15 January 2021 by User (talk | contribs)

Wikipedia defines Capacity management as a process used to manage information technology (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT resources are right-sized to meet current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. One common interpretation of capacity management is described in the ITIL framework. ITIL version 3 views capacity management as comprising three sub-processes: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management (known as resource capacity management in ITIL version2).[1]


Capacity Management Components[2]
There are many parameters that need to be considered when designing a service (or architecture). One to be considered right at the beginning is to satisfy demand for the service by providing enough capacity. The task of Capacity Management is to provide enough capacity to satisfy capacity and performance requirements. It should be timely and cost-effective. Capacity Management is often connected with performance. Capacity Management is a complex process. It includes proactive (e.g. forestall capacity issues) and reactive measures (e.g. responding to capacity events) and it is highly technical. To make it easier, ITIL suggests three sub-processes:

  • Business Capacity Management
  • Service Capacity Management
  • Component Capacity Management


Capacity Management Components
source: Advisera


  • Business Capacity Management: Business Capacity Management translates business plans and needs into requirements for IT services and architecture. As customers’ business changes, so are service requirements changing. Change in service requirements usually has an impact on demand for capacity. Service Level Requirements and Service Level Agreement targets must be met. Business Capacity Management should predict changing requirements for capacity demand and manage such demand on a tactical level. This means that Capacity Management is involved in planning processes as well as financial and service level management processes. In such a way, information flow will enable capacity management to satisfy future business needs.
  • Service Capacity Management: Service Capacity Management focuses on management, control and prediction of end-to-end performance of live IT services usage and workloads. It’s about measuring performance and comparing it to requirements that are set in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or Service Level Requirements (SLRs). Services are monitored to gather data, which identify trends and indicate exceptional conditions. This sub-process is often found in the Network Operations Center (NOC) or similar facility. Tools are used to help technicians (like IT Operations) to detect, for example, peaks in service usage, load, trends, etc. In such a way, incidents can be prevented before they occur, or data important for incident resolution can be gathered in cases when capacity-related incidents take place.
  • Component Capacity Management: Component capacity is what most of us are familiar with. Open your computer properties and check hard disc storage capacity. Or, ask your ISP what your internet link throughput is. Component Capacity Management focuses on management, control, performance prediction, utilization and capacity of technology components (e.g. a hard disc, network interface, processor, etc.). Like in Service Capacity Management, there are reactive and proactive activities within the scope of Component Capacity Management. Reactive activities will be taken when a capacity-related incident occurs. Experience and knowledge about service usage and how services are utilizing components is crucial for efficient proactive Component Capacity Management.

Which capacity to consider? Well, all three of them. Depending on where your activities are, you will be more concerned with one of the sub-processes. If you are strictly operational, then Component Capacity Management will be your daily job. Service Level Managers are concerned with performance that service provides. They will not go deep into details like what is memory utilization compared to its capacity (Component Capacity Management). What they care about is if, for example, throughput corresponds to the SLRs or SLAs that organization is obliged to. Business Capacity Management is the concern of people inside an organization who are trying to generate income with services (and their capacity and performance) that organization provides.


Functions and Benefits of capacity management:[3]

  • Functions of capacity management
    • Storage of capacity management data.
    • Ensuring required service levels are met in all disciplines.
    • With respect to resource utilization, analyzing, monitoring, and tuning the necessary modifications.
  • Understanding the current infrastructure performance and analyze the future requirements.
    • With input from other teams, project the annual growth plan for infrastructure.
    • Managing the requirements for computing resources.
  • Benefits of capacity management
    • Improvement of performance, reduction of consumption due to fine tuning of applications and components of infrastructure.
    • Improving the efficiency of provision capacity.
    • Elimination of redundant work and ensuring consistent monitoring of infrastructure components.
    • Improvement of IT cost per service unit components.


References

  1. Capacity Management Defition Wikipedia
  2. What are the Components of Capacity Management? Advisera
  3. Functions and Benefits of capacity management Techopedia


Further Reading

  • ITIL Capacity Management: Best Practices & Processes BMC
  • A Manager's Guide to Implementing Capacity Management Teamquest
  • Why your business needs capacity management Teamquest