CDB/CMIS: The
CDB/CMIS is critical in providing an effective capacity management function or
process. There are quite a few data sources that provide important information
with regards to management of the virtual infrastructure capacity. An important
step is to start building the culture where people are exploiting this
information and making more informed decisions about capacity.
Demand
Management: There needs to be more analysis of the actual resources used by a
project and the upgrades it incurs. This
leads to a requirement for workload characterisation. This can also be used to implement more
effective application consolidation (to reduce software costs). It also paves the way to identify moribund
applications that should be retired.
Utility chargeback:
Currently all charging undertaken is notional.
The current process makes an initial estimate of the required
infrastructure; based on input from the technical architect and where
appropriate the recommended specifications of the application. The process
should be enhanced to capture actual usage associated with a process. This refinement should lead to an improved
specification process and may reduce the need to expand the current estate.
Capacity
plan: A key part of capacity management is being able to link the needs of the
business to the current capacity and determining how those changing needs will
affect the underlying infrastructure.
This is covered typically by a formal capacity plan. This could be considered the hardest part of
the process to implement and is reliant on having a sound component and service
capacity process in place.
A longer term
goal should be the production of the Capacity Plan and I’ll look at this in
more detail next week…..
Adam Grummitt
Distinguished Engineer
Hi Adam,
ReplyDeletewould you say that Demand Management may be implemented through chargeback?
And would you say that financial management & chargeback is best implemented through a CMIS, or can this be handled better through Project/Portfolio Management or a Service Catalog?
Certainly Demand Management in the context of ITIL v2 can be implemented via chargeback with preferential usage schemes for out of hours processing/usage etc. The majority of implementations I have seen tend to use similar methodologies and it largely depends on the infrastructure that you are working with as to how effective they can be. Key considerations are obviously the granularity you will be monitoring at and the complexities of the services/components you would be looking to implement this on.
DeleteWith regards financial management, to implement it successfully you probably need a combination of all three. A fully implemented CMIS is essential in accurately recording the component/service usage and the portfolio/catalogue elements will be key to ensuring the delivered service will meet the needs of the customer and that they understand the cost/demand implications.