Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav – What has to get there?(5 of 17)

In the case of a journey, decisions have to be taken as to what to take with respect to the allowances applicable.  In a car, the main constraint is that of space.  On a flight it is volume and weight – with different levels depending on the price of the ticket.

So what do we need to look at in ITSM?

·         All of my belongings?

•          A selection of what is most important?

•          Needed in the short term?

•          Needed in the medium term?

•          Needed in the long term?

•          Most expensive?

•          Lightest?

•          What I am allowed to take by my service provider?

•          What level of service I am prepared to pay for?

•          Private flight, 1st class, business, premium, coach, economy?

•          Contractual agreement on service level and violations

•          Demand management…

In ITSM there is a cost associated with the provision of the infrastructure and support level offered that needs to be related to the significance of the service being provided.  This is the area known as Demand Management which will be discussed in more detail later.
The main point to notice at this stage is that without recognition of the need to categorize the services being offered, it is difficult to optimize the costs of the infrastructure.

There is a need to categorize and prioritize services and I’ll be discussing that on Monday.

Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer

Watch the trailer for our February 7 vSphere vs Hyper-V performance showdown on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUlS_BYbiBw&context=C36a599fADOEgsToPDskKtWaI4brkZancIDMs3pGSR

Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav – How do I get there?(4 of 17)

Satnav will maybe offer you a set of options for route selection - Fastest, cheapest, shortest, safest?

In ITSM what does management want?  What does the business need? I need to search for some authoritative options for all of this.  Ah, ITIL.

ITIL V3 has four books named to a standard – Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Operations and Service Transition.  The fifth is hung up on the dictionary definition of continuous and continual and feels obliged to add the word ‘Continual Service improvement’ to its title because so many people in error refer to ‘Continuous Service Improvement’.  It would have been much simpler just to call it Service Improvement.  But some people like to be pedantic….

In much the same way, the books describe some capacity management activities as iterative and some as cyclic but both affirm the key message that none of them are single snapshot activities.

The sixth book, the Introduction, instead of laying down the foundation or framework (SF) for the entire library and defining everything that is common to all the books (glossary, jargon, dataflows, interfaces etc) sadly turns out to be a retrospective summary of the other five books.  Like all of them, it was reviewed in isolation, hence the need for an early refresh.

There is a lot of talk about process and function, but mostly just about practice and procedure.

So ITIL describes the overall objectives without much attention to the costs and practicalities of achieving them in any given environment.  That is the job for the local decision makers, to adopt and adapt as appropriate.

This is where all the issues described by Paul Wilkinson in his ABC of ICT (ISBN 9789087531423 published by Van Haren)come in.  Essentially, the problems associated with attitude, behavior and culture.

Paul’s messages come across loud and clear largely by use of packs of cards, simulation games and cartoons making amusing and pithy observations about ITSM.

He talks about all the issues that ITSM consultants find to be the major obstacles at most sites – management commitment, Projects, Committees, Business liaison.

The lessons learned by many users of his Apollo 13 simulation game boil down to the statement that you need to get all the people relationships right to achieve effective implementation of ITIL (or any ITSM infrastructure framework) and priorities clear to avoid the CAB (Change Advisory Board) creating undue obstacles.

On Friday I’ll be looking at ‘What has to get there?’

Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer

Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav- Metron Metrics Matrix (3 of 17)

The metrics required for effective capacity management (CM) are many and various.  Many sites start with the basic component/resource metrics used primarily for event management and extend them to provide a performance monitoring and reporting regime.

If the metrics can be aggregated for processes into totals, reflecting services, this can be used to provide more effective and meaningful measures.

But to close the loop between the business view and the machine room view, the key is to identify the business metrics, activity drivers and business performance indicators.  These can then be reflected in the SLA with relevant (and measurable) targets and constraints and then those mapped to the low level metrics available from the operating system and any required application instrumentation.

This can be mapped into a matrix for every service to be the subject of full CM

The starting point is to do it for normal production service, but it may need to be extended to identify the requirement for development, test and acceptance (or pilot) as well as production.  And it may need to be developed to have less stringent values for periods of failover and disaster recovery.

On Wednesday I’ll be tackling ‘How do I get there?’

Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer

Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav –Where am I? (2 of 17)

Where am I?  Just click on your satnav.  But what if the signal is poor? Or you are in an area where there a few maps, road signs or postcodes?

Where am I in ITSM in general and Capacity Management in particular?  I guess I may need to do an audit – either myself or in conjunction with a consultant as a catalyst – or, if money is no object, I may as well outsource the complete assessment.

But what is the source and authority for my map?  What is the best practice?  Perhaps I will look at some reference books.  Check the IT Library.   Maybe try the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  Or maybe there are some standards, like ISO20000.

Then I find that capacity management is only about 50 pages scattered around ITIL V3 (it was 200 pages in a single ‘booklet’ in ITIL V1).  It tells me what to do, but not how to do it. 

ISO20000 only seems to provide a few checklists in a couple of pages telling me what the deliverables are but not what they contain.

I might try the ITSM Library and find a 200 page book all about capacity management, checklists and all.  But still it does not define what to do.  It is all a matter of adopt and adapt, take it or leave it, select as required to be fit for local purpose.

But you’ll be happy to know that there are some guidelines which can help develop the appropriate map for each site.

When an internal IT department applies service portfolio management it can seem like planners in the Soviet Union.  The 5-year plan was the central concept which brought stability and removed market fluctuations.  The planners calculated the need for products and then ordered the production.  For example a factory would receive an order for ladies shoes for five years production at full capacity. The problem with the planned economy was that it did not work; shops were full of shoes that nobody wanted.  The models were out-of-date and the quality shoddy due to lack of competition.

Sadly there is no external network of mapping/locating devices to identify automatically the current state of capacity management in your organisation.  It has to be done by analysis of current practice.  This is typically achieved by a ‘gap analysis’ done either internally, externally by a consultant or best, by a combination of these.

Many sites do an initial self-audit of their ITIL activities or get a consultant to do the same and maybe present the results using kiviat diagrams and the like to record the results of opinion surveys.  (This gives a scientific veneer to attitude responses given to specific and often badly coined questions).

I’ll cover the metrics required for effective capacity management on Monday…

Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer

Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav (1 of 17)

My book Capacity Management: A Practitioner Guide (ISBN 9789087535193 published by Van Haren) was written and published in 2009.  Since then, it has been bought by numerous people and read by many.  A lot of those who have read it came back with similar questions

“This is all very well, but what are the first steps I must take to implement (or improve) capacity management practice (CMP) in my organization?”  This question has been discussed with many sites and subsequent strategic consultancy assignments have followed along the lines of mentoring, masterclasses, gap analysis and process outlines.

So this postscript has emerged.  I have found the analogy of GPS (global positioning system) and satnav (satellite navigation) extremely useful in presenting this sort of analysis.  Almost everyone now accepts the use of some form of satnav rather than relying on intuition, an out-of-date book or atlas, vague memories of previous journeys or second hand information (“turn right at the new school and left where Daly’s garage used to be and then right again after the field with six cattle”).

But satnav requires the identification of precisely where you are now, where precisely you want to go and which sort of route you prefer (fastest, cheapest or via some preferred landmarks/ milestones).  This blog series extends the analogy to consider all practical aspects involved in trying to make capacity management effective.

Clearly, like any postscript, it will make more sense if you have read the book first.

Kipling wrote a poem in his Just So Stories (1902):

I KEEP six honest serving-men
  (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
  And How and Where and Who

Good advice and the sequence I’ll be following is:

WHERE am I?
WHERE do I want to go?
HOW do I get there?
WHAT has to get there?
WHO do I need to travel with?
WHAT else has to happen?
WHEN will I get there?
WHY should I go there?

Follow my blog on Friday when I’ll be starting with ‘Where am I?’

Adam Grummitt

Distinguised Engineer

Taking a trip down VMware vSphere Memory Lane

VMware have made some interesting changes with regard to the licensing of their vRAM technology. The previous licensing model enforced RAM restrictions and limitations on users of vSphere 5.

Now the previous vRAM licensing limits have gone and VMware have returned to a per-CPU licensing charge for the product.

So following on from VMware’s u-turn on vRAM licensing, does this mean that Memory reporting and allocation have become less important? 

No, in fact it’s as important as it’s ever been.  Faster CPUs and better information around CPU fragmentation has shifted focus away from CPU performance and onto to virtual memory allocations and performance.

Therefore, getting the most out of your VMware environment is a pre-requisite in these cash strapped days.  Getting your memory allocation wrong can cost you more than just money, it can affect service performance and the subsequent knock on effects  can significantly impact the whole enterprise.

From my experience, the common questions around virtual memory are:

·         What’s the difference between Active, Consumed or Granted Memory within a VMware environment?

·         How much virtual memory should you allocate to a virtual machine and how do you get it just right?

·         What are the benefits and disadvantages of using Memory Limits and Resource Pools?

I’ll be answering these questions and many more in my webinar on January 17^th http://www.metron-athene.com/services/training/webinars/index.html

Register now as I plan to take you on, what I hope, will be a memorable journey.

Explaining in detail how virtual memory is used and why VMware supports memory over-allocation, I’ll help you understand how you can identify your over provisioned VMs, what memory metrics to monitor and how to interpret them.

Finally, I’ll also be providing you with some best practice guidelines on Virtual Memory and some interesting information on using Memory Limits within your VMware Environment.

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Hiring, training, and developing a new generation of mainframe experts is not easy

Two facts:

-       A lot of experience goes out of the door when a baby boomer retires

-       Fewer new graduates are seeking careers in IT

The mainframe isn’t perceived as the latest and greatest technology that younger IT professionals want to work with either.  Hiring, training, and developing a new generation of mainframe experts isn't easy.
Just recently, the USA Today published an article that describes this problem well.  Universities are no longer teaching the skills that graduates need in order to seek out mainframe jobs:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-15/Detroit-mainframe-worker-shortage/57066816/1?

This dearth of young mainframe talent should be a real concern for senior managers and CIOs. 

When the experienced mainframe people in your organization decide to buy the fishing boat and sail off into the sunset, will you be able to support your mission critical services that rely on and are underpinned by the mainframe?

Expertise doesn’t have to mean people however.  Having the right toolset in place with expert knowledge built in can help fill the gaps left when the baby boomers move on. 

There is a ‘new kid on the block’ who can help.  ES/1 NEO from Metron is one expert system with years of mainframe performance and tuning advice built in.  Implemented in minutes it puts all that knowledge and experience at the fingertips of your mainframe team.  A system like this can also help train new staff, teaching them the knowledge that has taken retirees many years to gather through experience.

Already depended on by household names such as Panasonic, Toyota and Bank of Tokyo, ES/1 NEO brings together performance analysis across all aspects of z/OS, and recommends specific tuning actions to eradicate bottlenecks and improve service.

http://www.metron-athene.com/software/ES1-NEO/index.html


Rich Fronheiser
SVP, Strategic Marketing

Forecasting, when modeling is not the only choice

When most organizations are tasked with forecasting changes within their IT environment, many immediately think they have to create models.

There are two types of modeling techniques that can be used when forecasting changes.

The first being Analytical modeling which basically looks at the workloads within an environment and measures the arrival of work into the server. This technique allows an organization to very quickly see the impact of business changes.

The other modeling, but time consuming, technique is Simulation modeling. Simulation modeling basically revolves around duplicating the existing environment and running synthetic or real world transactions at a certain speed to determine the impact of business changes.

Many times and for a number of areas, modeling does not fit into the forecasting of certain components. That is when using trending or stacked bar charts provides the largest value to understand the forecasting of those business changes. These are such as, but not limited to, consolidating servers, looking at the headroom available within a VMware cluster and disk space growth.

Key items many Capacity Managers want to know are:

• Do I need to forecast and manage this server or environment against peaks or averages?
• When are models appropriate for forecasting?
• When are trend and stacked bar charts appropriate forecasting?
• How to show both peaks and averages for a metric on the same chart

I discussed forecasting techniques which answered these questions and more at my webinar, why not register for our comuunity and listen to the recording? http://www.metron-athene.com/_downloads/podcasts/index.asp

Charles Johnson
Principal Consultant

Capacity management - dates for your diary 2013!

There aren’t many things in life that you can get for free but we continue to run our series of free educational webinars focussed solely on capacity management.

Increasingly high numbers of attendees, from across the globe, confirm that our topics are those that are of most interest to you.

We've got a great package of events coming up over the next few months.

In January we’re running 3 events, kicking off with vSphere 5 versus Hyper-V SP1 Performance Showdown tomorrow, where you can join in as we compare two of the most popular x86 virtualization platforms in use.

This is followed by a Trip down Vmware vSphere Memory Lane on January 17 which looks at how memory is used within a VMware vSphere environment.

On January 31 we’re back again with Mind the Gap, Plan the Process: Five key steps to making 360°Capacity Management a reality

This is just the start of our great New Year agenda. Check it out and register to come along to our events http://www.metron-athene.com/training/webinars/webinar_summaries.html

If you have your own ideas for capacity management topics you'd like us to cover, drop me an email at Andrew.smith@metron-athene.comand I'm sure we can put together a session for you.

I look forward to meeting you at our webinars.

Andrew Smith

Chief Sales & Marketing Officer