Capacity Management: Operational or Strategic? (2 of 4)

In my previous blog I defined two types of capacity management, operational and strategic.

The capacity management promoted by so many point tools for technologies such as VMware is definitely operational.  Performance metrics are collected and analysed, usage of current capacity is assessed and then recommendations are made.  This could be a statement of how many more VMs a host can support, or what workloads should be moved where to avoid running out of capacity. 

Operational capacity management sits much happier as a silo-based activity.  Each silo such as VMware, networks or storage, benefit from tools developed and tuned to their own environment. 

Such tools enable small and highly specific recommendations to be made to tune a system to avoid short term capacity issues.  Such tools are more likely to integrate with that core silo technology, enabling automated change or parameters or movement of workloads.  Cost savings will accrue in small amounts through many small actions.

Undoubtedly these are capacity issues.  Also undoubtedly they are operational issues: short term fixes to problems that are about to occur based on what is known of the environment at that point in time.  

This is valuable work and worthy of implementing specialist solutions.  Nowadays everyone has heard people say ‘Well, think of the cost if the web site is down for a minute’.  Operational capacity management tools are an essential component in making sure such eventualities don’t happen.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that such point solutions are a complete capacity management solution however.  I will contrast them with strategic capacity management solutions on Monday to illustrate why just taking one approach, strategic or operational, is not enough.

In the meantime don't forget to register for our 'Data Correlation in Capacity Management' webinar  http://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/index.html

Andrew Smith

Chief Executive Officer

Capacity Management: Operational or Strategic? (1 of 4)

Many software suppliers seem to be talking about how they do capacity management these days.  

In the server area of infrastructure management alone you have:

·        Established businesses that have been offering data capture, capacity database and a    range of capacity reporting for some time.   Typically these businesses have started in one technology area such as mainframe or Unix and spread their coverage across platforms as IT has evolved.

·        Point solutions that analyse current performance and make tuning recommendations

·        Framework providers touting capacity management as one of the modules within their toolset.  Often this is the result of acquisition of a third party capacity management product that then gets increasingly integrated with their framework

·        SaaS/Cloud solutions that take in data from one or many environments

In this blog, I’d like to consider the first two of these options.

Common with environments that support rapid provisioning, is confusion between the first and second areas.  Both groups talk of capacity management, but the focus of what capacity is being managed is different.  This is not the metrics or applications that are being watched, more the time frame and nature of capacity events that are being reviewed.

In days gone past, one might have talked of this as the difference between capacity management and performance management.  As everyone seems to be using the terminology much more interchangeably these days, perhaps it is better expressed as strategic capacity management and operational capacity management.

Operational capacity management is based on measured performance metrics and recommends operational changes, e.g. moving VMs.

Strategic capacity management is based on taking action well in advance to remove the risks and problems before they occur.

I’ll be taking a look at both of these types of capacity management on Friday, in the meantime why not sign up to our Community and access our range of capacity management white papers and webinars http://www.metron-athene.com/_resources/index.html

Andrew Smith

Chief Executive Officer