360° Capacity Management - What kinds of data and information are needed to provide views from every angle (6 of 7)

In previous parts of my series, we talked about 360° Capacity Management and why it’s crucial to look at capacity management from every possible angle.  Today, I wanted to talk a bit about what kinds of data and information are needed to provide views from every angle.

Obviously, capturing server and mainframe resource performance and capacity data is crucial and the ability to store that data historically to identify trends (as well as peaks and valleys) is equally important.  If a server or mainframe is causing a performance and capacity problem with a service (or soon will), it’s important that such a bottleneck be removed as quickly as possible.  Without proper data, it’s impossible to be proactive in removing potential bottlenecks.

And yet server and mainframe resource data is only the tip of the iceberg.

Centralized storage and high-speed data networks are resources that are vital when it comes to providing today’s services.  Servers and mainframes can all have adequate capacity, but if there’s a bottleneck within storage devices or in the networks, service level agreements will not be met and customers will be unhappy. 

In the past, capacity managers would simply say, “That’s not my department – we have storage and network teams that handle those issues.” 

Unfortunately, the customers and the end-users don't know why their service is performing poorly – they just know that it is.  And for Capacity Management to operate at the higher levels (as described within ITIL) – Service Capacity Management and Business Capacity Management – it’s vital that capacity management take a level of responsibility for considering all the resources that combine to make a service meet SLAs – not just the servers and mainframes.

The key to varied types of data is the ability to bring this data into one central Capacity Management Information Store for quick analysis, reporting, trending, and alerting.   A good Capacity Management solution will have this capability built-in.  We’ll talk a bit about this in the final part of my series.

Beyond servers, mainframes, networks, and storage, there are other types of data needed to provide 360° Capacity Management.  I’ll touch on those as well on Wednesday in the final  installment of my series.

http://www.metron-athene.com/products/athene/datacapture/index.html

Rich Fronheiser
Chief Marketing Officer