Capacity Planning

	Home
	Main Page

	E-mail Solutions
	Migrations
	Integrations
	Gateways

	Application Development
	Internet / Java / XML
	Iris Recognition
	Custom Applications
	APPC / LU 6.2
	3270 EHLLAPI

	IT Integration
	Legacy Applications
	Application Porting

	Mainframe Services
	Capacity Planning
	Performance Tuning
	Service Level Agreements
	Accounting & Chargeback

	About us
	Company Profile
	Major Projects
	Our Staff
	Our Partners
	Contact us

Capacity Planning

Computing capacity - whether it be based on mainframe or high-performance servers and workstations - often represents a large investment for an enterprise. Without effective planning for workload growth and change on these systems, the cost of this investment can run out of control. While Performance Management enables the cost-effective management of the existing computing environment, Capacity Planning ensures that your organization will understand how your changing workload must be accommodated by changes in hardware, and you will be able to plan accordingly.

  Capacity Planning is often viewed as an "art", requiring the combined use of a variety of tools and disciplines. Some software vendors have tackled this subject by building semi-automated modeling packages which employ the principles of queuing theory to predict the impact of workload and hardware changes on system performance. In general, however, these models work well only on systems which are running significantly below capacity. This is something of a "Catch-22"; the results may not be accurate on a heavily-loaded system - which is in dire need of capacity planning -but may be accurate on a system which has more resources than it needs!

  What is usually required for systems running at or near capacity is a detailed analysis of current workloads, latent demand (i.e. work that would "appear" if there were more resources available), and application volumes in relation to business trends. We have employed our expertise in this area to produce comprehensive capacity planning documents which detail methodologies and assumptions used, hardware and software environments, workload characterization, historical analysis, and workload forecasting.

  We have employed a variety of analytical tools, including SAS, MICS, MXG, BGS BEST/1 MVS, OMEGAMON and Epilog from Candle, and a number of PC products (Excel, Harvard Graphics, etc.). We will be happy to help you with your Capacity Planning.

We recommend that you check out the Computer Measurement Group (CMG) and SHARE conferences.