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Capacity Planning Issues - a dynamic situation : Case Study
Industry-FTT Data Center, Mumbai
L.N. Welingkars Institute of Management, Development & ResearchYear of Submission: September, 2013
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You cannot afford to assume that the data center has unlimited capacity; this iseven more true for the internal cloud
Capacity management ensures IT capacity co st effect ively meets business
requirements. A capacity management process will reduce infrastructure waste whileproviding a framework for future acquisitions planning and accurate cost accounting.
2
This research is designed for:
CIOs or IT directors
IT infrastructure / data centermanagers
Internal utility infrastructure / cloudevangelists
This research will provide you with:
An understanding of why the lost art of
capacity management is more critical thanever in consolidated proto-cloudinfrastructures.
A process and workbook for cataloging andassessing current capacity in light of theneeds of the business.
A process checklist for capacitymanagement with links to relevantadditional resources and tools at Info-Tech.
A gas gauge model for capacity planningbased on reserve capacity andmaintenance of service.Capacity management and service tiers have apositive correlation with consolidation success.
.15
.09
.21 *
.36 *
Capacity Planning
Cost Accounting
Capacity Mgmt
Service Tiers
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Executive Summary
Manage capacity b y service tiers for cos t eff ic iency.Not all services require the same capacity. Examinevariable capacity costs for each tier to see how savings might be realized without compromising service levels.
Take a gas gauge approach to c apacity planning. Once pools of reserve capacity are established, futurecapacity acquisitions are based on service maintenance rather than application addition.
Capacity management is a process, not a product. Look to system management and internal cloudmanagement tools with an eye to how they might automate your capacity management practice.
3
Understand
Assess
Plan/Prepare
Capacity m anagement is a cri t ical step between simple server consolidation/virtualization and creating the
internal infrastructure-as-a-service cloud that enterprises are currently focused on building. In an internal private cloud the organization pays for everything. Unlike an external public cloud, wherecapacity is open-ended, the organization has to pay for total capacity-- not just capacity that is being used rightnow.
Virtual izat ion does n ot create capacity or m ake capacity less expensive.Server virtualization is an importantenabler of internal andexternal cloud computing, but it alone does not make a cost effective cloud service.
Turn data center management o utside-in. Cloud computing is associated with delivering IT as a service.Assessing the infrastructure for capacity management and planning starts with the business and ends with amodel for total cost to serve and capacity management across service tiers.
Use Info -Techs Capacity Planning Data Collect ion & Tiering Wor kboo k to assess infrastructure based ondependencies, interdependencies, criticality, and business priority.
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Understand
This section will help you: Understand why capacity
management is a critical activitybetween consolidation andinternal cloud.
Put virtualization in its properplace as a tactical enabler,rather than a managementstrategy.
See how capacity managementprepares the infrastructure for acloudy future, and aids inongoing consolidation andvirtualization.
Section in Brief
1
3
2Assess
Plan/Prepare
4
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Focus on capacity management to optimize cost effectiveness & service, bothnow and for an increasingly cloudy future
An internal cloud is infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) delivered frominternal IT resources. Consolidation andvirtualization play a role in building an internalcloud, just as they do in external IaaS in a publiccloud service (e.g. Amazon Web Services).
Capacity management is im portant
because
virtualization does not create capacity, nor doesit automatically make all capacity cost-measurableand cost-effective. A capacity management strategywill enable a move from infrastructure as assetmanagement to infrastructure as servicemanagement.
Benefi ts wil l include:
The capability to document current capacity.
The ability to plan capacity in advance.
The ability to estimate the impact of new appsand modifications.
Cost savings through elimination of overprovisioning capacity, and through plannedspending rather than reactive spending.
Service and spending optimized to matchbusiness needs.
5
N= 123
Most IT departments engaged in consolidation and virtualization are focused oninternal cloud development first. A third (33%) will focus onlyon the internalcloud.
43%
33%
12%
12%Focus on the internalcloud before external
Implementing onlyinternal cloudsolutions
Focus on the externalcloud before internal
Implementing onlyexternal cloudsolutions
76 %focusing
oninternalcloud
External public clouds will play a role in the future of corporate IT, but right now most IT departmentsare focusing on developing the internal cloud.
Interest in theexternal cloudremains strong butimplementation isin early days. Mostare looking to theexternal clouds
role becomingmore important 3-5 years from now.
External cloud in three to five years.
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It is recommended for capacity management (infrastructure analysis &planning) to optimize service tiers
Capacity management practices lead to greater success in infrastructure consolidation/virtualizationprojects.
Having developed service tiers in infrastructure was the strongest predictor of overall success inconsolidation.
A capacity management process, such as inventorying resources annually, was also a predictor ofsuccess, especially in managing virtual server sprawl, security assurance, and business continuity.
Cost accounting and capacity planning were not predictors of current success. However, as we shallsee, efficient capacity planning and cost accounting are not direct inputs, but outcomes of capacitymanagement.
6
Correlation with Success in Consolidation/Virtualization Projects
Note: * = correlation is significant. N = 88.Source:
.15
.09
.21 *
.36 *
Capacity PlanningCost Accounting
Capacity Management
Service Tiers
Success was defined as:
Reduced capital and facilitycosts.
Reduced man-hours spenton management ofinfrastructure.
Increased uptime and
business continuity. Reduced virtual server
sprawl. Reduced security concerns.
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Where this solution set fits: Capacity management is a critical part of the largerpicture of building the internal cloud
This set is one of a series dedicated to building converged utility infrastructure (see below right). All these sets reference Info-Techs layer cake model of consolidation (right) and our three laws of utility/cloud investment (below left).
7
1
Alignment is
Software
2
Hardware is
Capacity
3
Management is
a Differentiator
Three Laws of Cloud
Infrastructure Investment
How do yousl ice th is cake?
Related sets that address aspects of building an internal cloud
Build a Server Acquisition
Strategy for the Internal
Cloud
Build an Optimized
Infrastructure-as-a-
Service Internal Cloud
Mitigate Costs &
Maximize Value with a
Consolidated Network
Storage Strategy
Craft a Converged Data
Center Network Strategy
Evaluate a Backup
Architecture Strategy
Select a Consolidated
Storage Platform
A management process that starts with businessneeds, works through capacity optimization, and endswith a plan for tiered service pooling adheres with Info-Techs three laws because it relates capacity
management directly with servicing the needs of thebusiness.
Info-Techs layer cake model for the internal cloudshows how infrastructure layers and virtualization allcontribute to service, but an additional element isefficient management of capacity across the layers.
For more detail on the three lawsand how they relate to a capacityplanning process see slide 18.
http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/it-evaluate-a-backup-architecture-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/it-evaluate-a-backup-architecture-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/select-a-solid-foundation-for-the-consolidated-infrastructurehttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/select-a-solid-foundation-for-the-consolidated-infrastructurehttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/select-a-solid-foundation-for-the-consolidated-infrastructurehttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/select-a-solid-foundation-for-the-consolidated-infrastructurehttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/it-evaluate-a-backup-architecture-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/it-evaluate-a-backup-architecture-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/beyond-consolidation-build-an-optimized-infrastructure-as-a-service-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloud8/12/2019 Capacity Planning Issues_A Dynamic Situation_Final
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Compare & contrast the cloudsfor the internal cloud, your enterprise pays foreverything and shoulders all the risk
The internal and external clouds are both abstracted environmentswhere applications are provisioned with available and scalablecompute capacity.
Abstracted compute resources (processor cycles, memory, storage)are typically derived from aggregated and virtualized hardware.
Compute resources are presented to the customer as a service.Both models are highly agile and responsive to changing businessdemands.
8
Infrastructure is owned by an externalthird
party. They are responsible for managingcapacity and mitigating risk.
Application workloads are provisioned bythese abstracted resources which areelastic (they scale up with need).
Customersshare access to theseresources (typically via the Internet) in amulti-tenant environment and pay only forwhat they use.
External Public
Compute Cloud
VS.
Infrastructure is entirely owned by the
enterprise and managed by IT. Application workloads are provisioned by
resources that can also be elastic, butscaling is limited by available capacity.
The businessthe sole customer ofinternal IT infrastructurepays for thewhole cloud regardless of how much is
used.
Internal Private
Compute Cloud
Key
Differences
Similarities
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It hurts to be alonetotal ownership of limited capacity imposes anexpensive box that can be invisible to the business
Unused capacity costs are ongoing overhead for theinternal cloud.
In an internal Infrastructure as a Service cloud, the enterprisepays for all capacity, not just a share of a larger third-party pool.
Justifying the IT spend for total capacity is difficult when thebusiness is used to a 1 to 1 relationship between an applicationand a hardware purchase.
Risk mitigation is a significant component of totalcost.
In the external cloud, the third party provider is responsible forrisk mitigation of the capacity it rents (availability, recoverability,security).
In the internal cloud, IT bears this responsibility. Significant costdrivers are the hardware and data redundancy that are neededto mitigate risk.
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When the capacity limits are reached, physical infrastructure needs to be acquired ad hoc.
The public cloud is open ended. The third-party provider maintains a practically unlimited pool of capacity that isavailable on demand. In the private cloud, capacity is limited.
Concern about hitting the wall of internal capacity limits leads to over provisioning.Acquiring more capacity than isneeded means wasted spending and maintenance time.
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Draw a clear line from business need through software & hardware needs -transparency is not the same as invisibility
The goal of capacity management is to optimizeperformance and efficiency of the current
infrastructure, to plan for future capacityrequirements, and to justify the financialinvestment in the infrastructure.
The classic steps in capacity management are:
Analyze current capacityfind out how appsare currently provisioned and what theperformance and availability requirementsare for each one.
Optimize the infrastructure to ensure themost efficient use of existing capacity.
Analyze the impact of new or updated appson capacity.
Analyze demand to model servicerequirements of the infrastructure and predictfuture growth in demand.
Develop a capacity plan that relates futuregrowth in capacity to maintenance of servicelevels.
These steps will guide our recommendations insection 3 of this report.
10
Capacity Management vs. Planning
One Leads to the Other
Capacity management is a tactical activityfocused on the present. It enables cost
effective provisioning of IT services by helpingorganizations match their IT resources to
business demands.
Capacity plannin g is a strategic activityfocused on the future. It is the process
determining the amount of hardware resources
that will be required to deliver the appropriatelevel of service for the defined workload at the
least cost.
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Rediscover the lost art of capacity management & planning after decades of inefficientdistributed processing
Capacity management in IT matured in the mainframeenvironment, where resources were costly and it tookconsiderabletime to upgrade. Applications needed tobe provisioned from a share of the centrally
maintained and expensive compute resource.
Resource partitions needed to be rigidly cost justifiedand cost managed because of the high cost of thetotal capacity. Expanding capacity in this environmentwas expensive andtime consuming.
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As data centers transitioned to a distributedenvironment supported by inexpensive UNIX, Linuxand Windows servers, a brute force approach toprovisioning became the norm. Cheap industrystandard servers could be assigned to provisionspecific new or expanding applications or services.
Capacity management and planning skills atrophied incompanies accustomed to this throw some more
hardware at it approach. Unregulated distributing
processing bred increased complexity in unregulatedserver sprawl, and waste in poorly utilized silos ofprocessing and storage.
That was then This is now
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Server virtualization does not equal cloudthe internal cloud is the end of a journey thatbegins with server CAPEX savings
Organizations typically embark on servervirtualization to realize immediate capital savingsfrom reduced server hardware footprint, throughconsolidation.
However, as more of the server infrastructure isvirtualized, further benefitssuch asimprovements in provisioning agility and service
availabilitybegin to emerge.
A managed internal cloud is the end of this journeythat begins with a simple need to save money onserver acquisition.
To realize these benefits, management capabilityof both the underlying capacity as well as thevirtualized abstraction layer is critical.
12
Server virtualization mitigates waste of distributed servers through better resource utilization and processagility, but virtualization is an enabling tactic, not an infrastructure model.
The internal cloud is not a product that will be delivered out of a box. It will be developed over time,enabled by consolidation, standardization, virtualization, and capacity management that focuses onservice delivery to the business.
Utility Infrastructure
(Internal Cloud)
Application
Lifecycle
PerformanceMonitoring
Automation
Metering(Chargeback)
Provisioning
LoadBalancing
Availability
Recovery
P2VCandidateIdentification
Management
ConsolidatePercentV
irtualized
Time (relative to size and hardware refresh rate)
0%
100%
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Server CAPEX reduction is thegreatest benefit of consolidationthrough virtualization.
Virtualization does not lead directly tosavings in facility, storage, or networkcosts.
Organizations that were more than50% virtualized generally agreed thatall types of management took fewerman-hours due to consolidation.
However, increased virtualization hadthe biggest impact on servermanagement. Organizations thatwere more virtualized spent
significantly fewer man-hours onserver instance management.
Careful management planning for theentire data center will optimize facilitycosts, storage costs, network costs,and management complexity.
Agreement with costs have been reduced
by consolidation
Averages above the dotted line indicateagreement that costs have been reduced. Thedifference between low and high virtualizationis only significant for server cost reduction.
Agreement with the number of
hours spent has been reduced
Averages above the dotted line indicateagreement that man-hours have beenreduced. The difference between lowand high virtualization is only significantfor server instances.
Saving time and money on servers only increases as consolidation progresses. However, other layers of theinfrastructure do not see the same success. Similarly, management benefits are mainly in server instances.
What this means
Wrap up consolidation efforts and focus on capacity
management for the entire infrastructure
NetworkStorageFacilityServer
> 50%< 50%
Infrastructure
Costs
Physical
Infrastructure
Server
Instances
Servers Virtualized
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Start capacity management nowto optimize currentinfrastructure andboost success in ongoing consolidation
2011 is the year that most companies doing consolidation will cross the line to having more than 50% of their infrastructure virtualized. Manyhave already crossed that line.
14
0
10
2030
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
% Virt Now % Virt 18Months
% Virt 3Years
Current & Projected Virtualization
Server Virtualization by Company Size
What this means
On the journey from tactical server consolidation tointernal cloud management, enterprises are at apoint where management is going to matter morethan infrastructure effectiveness. With a majority ofworkloads virtualized, virtual infrastructure isincreasingly core infrastructure.
Enterprises have likely moved beyond the lowhanging fruit of server consolidation (such as test,dev, and non-critical servers) to virtualizing moremission critical and resource demanding workloads.
However, a significant proportion of the workloadswill remain un-virtualized for immediate future.Treating infrastructure as a service management
model will need to account for allserver workloads.
Capacity management correlates with consolidationand virtualization success. In addition to orientingtoward IT as a service, capacity management willhelp deal with an increasingly virtualizedconsolidated infrastructure.
42%
50%
52%
Small (0-250)Medium (250-1000)
Large (1000+)
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Avoid virtual server sprawl & boost success in areas such as business
continuity & security with capacity management
Virtual server sprawl happens when the business losessight of infrastructure requirements and costs of running avirtual machine. Fast and easy server deploymentbecomes confused with cheap server deployment.
Negative impact of virtual server sprawl includes:
Wasted capacity.Resource-consuming virtual
machines are running that nobody is using oraccountable for. Capacity waste is especially seen instorage, where high end SAN space is being eaten bymultiple virtual machine instances.
Performance degradation.As more virtual machinesare added to the system, the performance of all virtualmachines degrades as more workloads contend for
the same resources.
Unplanned capacity additions.As virtual sprawlincreases and available resources decrease, there isdemand to add more physical capacity.
Having a capacity management plan significantly reducesconcerns about virtual sprawl.
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Sprawl is alive and well in our organization.Virtualization has allowed application and businessteams to buy additional dev/test/staging environmentswhere they haven't been able to afford them before.They're using the same budgets they had before,they're just buying more servers with them now.
Without an idea of the cost and appropriate provisioning of capacity, the benefits from reducing thecomplexity of physical server management is eradicated by virtual sprawl.
.15.16
.10
.28
.24.24
N = 88. Source: .
Significant correlationwith capacitymanagement
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T i f t t t t id i k f b i d th h
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Turn infrastructure management outside-inwork from business needs throughapp requirements to total capacity requirements
The data center is traditionally seen as a roomfull of assetsservers, networks, and storagearrays, that need to be fed and cared for (withappropriate power, cooling and configurationmanagement).
A capacity management view of the datacenter starts outside, with the servicerequirements of the customer, then worksthrough all of infrastructure assets needed todeliver expected service levels.
The total cost of application, storage, server,network, and facilities is the total cost of theservice being rendered to the business. Thisis the total cost to serve or the total cost of all
capacity.
Finally, a capacity management strategy looksat how total cost of capacity can be mitigated.The key question is how much capacity isgood enough to maintain service now and inthe immediate future.
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Process Map for a Developing a Capacity Plan
Think like a service provider rather than an asset manager if you are going to offerinfrastructure-as-a-service from a utility infrastructure or internal cloud.
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Determine service level requirements based on business need
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Criticality
Importance andtolerance for
downtime
PerformanceMaximumcomputing
needed
Growth
Long-termplanning
+
+
The current capacity requirements(CPUs, network connections, I/0channels) that the app needs to performat a level in line with user expectations.
Base level performance requirement;what is the worst acceptable responsetime or throughput?
What this includes
Expected growth in demand from theapp or service over the next three years.
Accounts for uncertainty.
What this includes
Current importance of the app or serviceto the business.
Impact to the business of loss of serviceor poor performance.
What this includes
Original configuration requirements fromapp deployment.
Performance testing and appperformance monitoring
Physical to virtual machine (P2V)migration planning tools.
Where to get it
Needs assessment for disaster recoveryand business continuity planning.
Business impact analysis (BIA) fordisaster recovery.
Where to get it
Predicted growth in business can helppredict growth in transactionalprocesses
Monitor historical utilization to build aprojection of future utilization
Where to get it
Optimal performance requirements +criticality to the business +future growth potential=total service requirements.
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Seek balance in provisioningService is a function of adequate capacity foroperation, growth, and redundancy
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Capacityin Use
StandbyCapacity
RedundantCapacity
TotalCapacity
Goodenoughperformance
Scenario one:
Need is greater than available capacity
Scenario two:
Redundant capacity is less than adequate
CurrentNeed
FutureNeed
Result:Performance is good enough and availableenough right now, but when need expands, service willsuffer due to inadequate capacity.
Capacityin Use
StandbyCapacity
RedundantCapacity
TotalCapacity
Goodenoughperform
ance
CurrentNeed
FutureNeed
Result:Performance is adequate now and in the future;however, lack of redundant capacity threatensavailability. SLA availability guarantees will not be met.
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f
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Establish a systems management team to gather baseline information oncurrent capacity and to develop a capacity plan
Capacity assessment requires the combined input of theprofessionals who manage each layer of the infrastructure ,
because all layers of the infrastructure contribute to servicelevels.
Consolidation of infrastructure is not just consolidation of physicalboxes and data, but also consolidation of skills and personnel.
Establish a systems management team with representation fromall the individual technology silos to work together. Train them inadvance to use any new tools specific to a consolidatedenvironment.
Head the team with a sponsor who has control over every aspectof IT, and who has influence and the HR skills necessary tomanage a diverse team.
Were transitioning the staff to a different methodology thats
about planning for strategic growth. I sent my staff for training30 days before we got the first new server in, because the
challenges and complications with new tools are pretty huge.But once [the team] has gotten there, the world is wonderful forus. The server guys are saying this is great stuff! because
theyre able to very quickly meet demand increasing size,upgrading an appwhatever it is, they can meet thosedemands a lot more efficiently.
-- Assistant director of MISDocument the systems management team in the datacollection plan. Use Info-Techs Capacity PlanningData Collection & Tiering Workbookto begin planning.
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Infrastructure_3
Identify dependencies to assess total capacity requirements
25
Data collected for a complete infrastructure
inventory should include:
Device name and model
Server configuration Storage configuration Storage or server dependencies Application dependencies Network hardware configuration Redundancy reviews
The Infrastructure Inventory and Validation worksheet will helpyou to collect and organize data related to the organization'sservers, storage, switches, and routers to further understandrelationships.
This tab has been populated with an example to help you getstarted. Be sure to validate all infrastructure inventory to ensureaccuracy.
Infrastructure_1
Infrastructure_2
Servers SAN
25
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Plan the plan: use a Business Plan & Process Checklist to get buy-in for theprocess and track results
Use the Capacity ManagementProcess Checklist to track your
organizations progress in developing
your internal cloud. Additional activitiesand checkpoints can be added to the
checklist, and others removed, tocustomize it to your situation.
The Internal Cloud Business Plan Templatewill help build abusiness plan for the enterprise as well as document business
justifications for any additional projects that are connected toimplementations, such as virtualization, shared storage, andnetwork convergence. The goal is to get all the pieces in placefor an overall strategy. The resulting document is thereforeintended for initial project scoping andfor future reuse, as moreconsolidation strategies are defined.
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Analyze current capacity:
compare current provisioning to application & business need
Compare the provisioning of apps between high,medium, and low criticality groupings in the workbook.
Are there significant differences between them? Isthere a one size-fits-all approach across apps inservers, networking and storage?
If you have internal SLAs, compare service levels ofany items referenced in the SLA with actualperformance. Are the apps meeting expectations, andare they provisioned adequately to meet expectations?
Review usage of various apps and services of CPU,memory, and I/O devices. This analysis will identifyhigh usage resources that may be a problem if demandincreases in the future.
Record resource utilization and determine major
processes consumed by each app. Identify where each workload spends time. Analyze all
components of the process chain to determine systemresources responsible for the greatest portion ofresponse time for each workload.
1
Align your catalog of apps and dependencies with business expectations of performance and criticality.
Analyze whether current capaci ty is
meeting g ood enough p er formance
requirements by appl icat ion.
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30
Optimize the infrastructure: plan to create service tiers to optimize your
capacity investment
Bronze
Low OPEX on a cost-per-unit basis.
Provides just goodenough levels of
reliability for services. Highly agile environment
suitable to rapid go to
market business
strategies still maturing.Example Workloads:
Test and Development Short duration
processing projects. Fast and cheap
deployment
Gold
Highest CAPEX andOPEX of all tiers.
Highest affordable levelof reliability.
Rigid change controlresults in lowest degreeof agility.
Example Workloads
Mission critical apps
Apps that require ahigher degree of capacitybandwidth
Infrequent updates withlong lead times.
Silver
Higher CAPEX andOPEX than bronze.
Adequate levels ofreliability for services.
Production-level agility,but more rigid thanbronze.
Example Workloads:
Regular production
servers/apps New and updated appsbrought online in aproduction environment.
Rapid deployment a plus
In assessing current capacity, you have seen that not all apps have the samebusiness criticality and performance requirements. In planning infrastructure,look to tiering services by groupings of capacity requirements.
Resist the temptation to treat infrastructure as one-size-fits-all. It has been found that the practice oftiering capacity by service levels significantly impacts consolidation success.
Example of a three-t ier service approach to capacity
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Service tiering was correlatedwith each of the above measuresof success in consolidatinginfrastructure.
2
Work through infrastructure planning & development efforts to identify
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Work through infrastructure planning & development efforts to identifyopportunities for service tiers
Hardware iscapacity. Service is a function of performance and redundancy. Through the systemsplanning team look for opportunities for service tiering at every level.
Start with consol idated storage: For m any service t iers are synonymous with storage t iers
Storage can be the most expensive part of a consolidated infrastructure, but it need not be treated as a singlemonolithic entity. For storage service tiering, look to matching the fastest (and most expensive) disk with the mostcritical processes and data. Variable redundancydisk, data, and device (including backup)also defines a servicetier. Storage virtualization can also boost utilization/lower costs across tiers. See the Solution Set Mitigate Costs &Maximize Value with a Consolidated Network Storage Strategy.
In servers look at on bo ard redundancy and proc essing archi tecture
The server is the base unit of capacity in a consolidated infrastructure but server pricing can vary depending on the
class of processor, number of processors, and other on board redundancy such as dual power supplies. Form factoradvance such as blades also increase density and reduce footprint. See the Solution Set Build a Server AcquisitionStrategy for the Internal Cloud.
Calculate the impact of t ier ing o n po wer and co ol ing and examine redundancy needs with in the faci l i t ies
Facilities are 40% of total cost of the infrastructure. Efficiencies in all the the above layers will have an impact on theload requirements of the data center. Also look for opportunities to vary facilities redundancy for each service tier(see case study below). The Solution Set Renovate the Data Centerhas significant value even if you are notcurrently renovating. The set has detailed tools for capturing and optimizing facilities costs including the PowerRequirements Calculatorand the Standby Power Supply Calculator.
In networks var iable bandwidth, por t and switch redundancy, impact classes of service
One way variable storage tiers have been be architected is to have tier one storage use faster Fibre Channel ports
and switches while a secondary tier uses Ethernet and iSCSI for storage traffic. Converged networking in 10 gigabitEthernet holds the promise of reducing network complexity while improving performance of both servers andstorage through better I/O and I/O management. In converged I/O variable service becomes a matter of policyrather than hardware. See the Solution Set Craft a Converged Data Center Network Strategy.
U hi l f bi i i f l
http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-centerhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-power-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-power-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-standby-power-supply-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/craft-a-converged-data-center-networking-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-standby-power-supply-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-power-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-center/data-center-power-requirements-calculator?nav_id=2639http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/renovate-the-data-centerhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/build-a-server-acquisition-strategy-for-the-internal-cloudhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategyhttp://www.infotech.com/research/ss/construct-a-storage-consolidation-strategy8/12/2019 Capacity Planning Issues_A Dynamic Situation_Final
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Use this tool for a big picture comparison of total costsfor each infrastructure layer
Detailed TCO analysis is best left to strategies for each infrastructure layer. However this tool can provide a bigpicture snapshot of cost comparison across infrastructure layers.
Exploring opportunities to tier services ininfrastructure layers will yield total cost savingsopportunities. In the following case, for example, amid-sized professional data services firm estimatedpotential savings of more than $20,000 per yeardifference from facilities service tiering alone.
Several of the Solution Sets for planning individualinfrastructure layers (storage, network, network,facilities) have detailed TCO comparisoncalculators. For a big picture at-a-glancecomparison across layers use the InfrastructureTCO Comparison Tool.
Using examples and data from case studies, thistool was developed to illustrates the most common
TCO comparisons: TCO of the existing infrastructure vs. TCO of your proposed project.
TCO of multiple proposed projects (e.g. build a new facility vs. co-location).
Case study: Application of server tiers produces potential
http://www.infotech.com/research/infrastructure-tco-comparison-toolhttp://www.infotech.com/research/infrastructure-tco-comparison-toolhttp://www.infotech.com/research/infrastructure-tco-comparison-toolhttp://www.infotech.com/research/infrastructure-tco-comparison-tool8/12/2019 Capacity Planning Issues_A Dynamic Situation_Final
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Case study: Application of server tiers produces potentialfacility & TCO savings for this mid-sized organization
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Electricity rate: $0.093Electricity usage per hour: 106 kWCost per year: $86,415.23
All infrastructure components (e.g. servers) arefed with the same A/B-side power and UPS in aone-size-fits-all approach. There is an opportunityfor reducing TCO by assigning less expensivestandards to the infrastructure supplying capacityfor less critical applications.
Before
Electricity rate: $0.093Electricity usage per hour:
Bronze infrastructure: 16 kWSilver infrastructure: 11 kW
Gold infrastructure: 51 kWCost per year: $63,588.64
Managing capacity a way that matches criticalitywith business demand has resulted in servicetiers that save the organization money.
After
Cost per square foot: $864 Cost per square foot: $636- 26%
These savings consider facilities costs alone. Service tiering can achieve even more savings inareas such as server CAPEX, network costs, and reducing the time needed to manage physicalinfrastructure.
A data services company was planning a renovation of their 100 square foot data center. They exploredthe idea of tiering their facilities according to criticality, and calculated the cost savings of $22,827 per year
in doing so.
Analyze the impact of new or updated apps
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Analyze the impact of new or updated apps.Pursue a policy of virtualization first for agile provisioning
A gold, silver, or bronze service tier represents abaseline - what is good enough to provision agiven workload in line with its performance andcriticality requirements.
At the server level a service tiers can include bothnative (non-virtual) servers and clusters of serversthat have been partitioned for virtualization.
Taking a virtualize unless otherwise approach,
new and updated apps should be assessed forhosting on the virtualized tier. Updates can includeneeds for new levels of performance and capacity.Legacy apps on end-of-life hardware should alsobe evaluated for migration to the virtual tier.
In order to assess the impact of new workloads oncapacity, careful assessment of requirements isneeded. Use theApplication Assessment Checklist
(modified from Appleton Ideas) as a template fordeveloping your own.
3
Virtualize unless otherwise. Virtualization is a tactic for enabling more efficient and agile provisioning. All new orupdated workloads should be evaluated for virtual hosting.
A trigger for virtualizing core production workloads in several companies has been the realization thatperformance and availability (service) for secondary workloads in their virtual server environment wasbetterthan what for primary workloads in a non-virtual environment.
Consolidated storagewith variable servicetiers
Consolidatednetwork with variableservice tiers
Non-VirtualGold Servers
VirtualizedGold Cluster
Non-VirtualSilver Servers
VirtualizedSilver Cluster
VirtualizedBronze Cluster
P2V Migration
P2V Migration
Visual example of go ld, silver,bronze service t iers with both
vir tual and non -vir tual servers
Note:
Some enterprises may find that virtualinfrastructure is not ready for their gold tier.
Non-virtual servers can include non-standard (non-x86) servers. Some workloads may never be virtualized.
Analyze demand to model service requirements;
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Analyze demand to model service requirements;identify trends to forecast future business and new workloads
Forecast business activitygrowth in the business will mean more transactional processing. Ifgrowth translates into more staff, it may also translate into more users of applications.
Include increased demand in the analysis of requirements for new and updated applications.
Monitor and analyze capacity requirements over time.
4
From a capacity standpoint, wehit a wall of CPU saturationbefore we realized where thepractical limit was. We learned,with a bit of pain, to use software
to model a trend line telling usyoure going to hit a wall at this
time next year unless you addcapacity.
With current capacity under control, begin looking to the future of the business, and how growth willchange the capacity needed to fuel the required workloads.
Develop a capacity plan: use a reserve capacity
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Develop a capacity plan: use a reserve capacitymodel for management & planning
5
The capacity reservation model tierscapacity according to agility, reliability, control, and cost.
The idea of reservation reintroduces the importance of justification for capacity usage. Capacity is
not open ended but reserved for certain kinds of workloads. Reserve capacity enables business units to order IT services as they would from a managed service
provider (including an external infrastructure as a service cloud). But IT can also show the its entirecapability in terms of units (server instances) that can be supported at each level (see the case studyon slide 22 for an example).
Adding a workload to a capacity tier counts against available capacity a limited resource.Accommodating the addition may require spending to increase capacity or removal/retirement of
another workload to free-up capacity.
Each time a unit of capacity from one of the three tiers is provisioned out to the business it is
removed from the pool of available capacity.
The remaining capacity can be monitored as a gas gauge or planning point for bringing additionalcapacity online.
The gas gauge approach avoids ad hoc hardware purchases and avoids over-provisioningand over-spendingas capacity is brought online at each level commensurate with projected need.
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Case study: This manufacturer has deployed tiered services & capacity
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Good news: the advice laid out in this Solution Set works as well in practice as it does in theory. With asolid capacity management plan in place, the organization reports success in realizing benefits andalmost no pitfalls in their comprehensive consolidation efforts.
Case study: This manufacturer has deployed tiered services & capacitymonitoring as it closes on a goal of 99% virtualization
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The client: Manufacturer of specialty paper products. They have been virtualizing infrastructure for over five years, and nowover 96% of their servers are virtual. The plan is to have 99.5% of the infrastructure virtualized as soon as possible, onlyavoiding virtualization when hardware limitations absolutely prevent it.
Follow a virtualize unless
otherwise physical-to-virtualpolicy
The organization identified a widerange of benefits from virtualizingnearly 100% of their infrastructure,
such as:
Lower costs. Simplified management of physical
resources. Less disruption in service. Great agility. This was the number
one reason to upgrade.
Tier services for cost savings
From storage on up, resources aredivided according to criticality. Themain resource pooling follows athree-tier system similar to the onerecommended by Info-Tech:
High-priority production: workloadscritical to the business.
Monitor capacity to forecast
expansion needs
Current infrastructure load ismonitored in order to know when toadd new hardware.
Trend lines output by automatedsoftware predict when storagecapacity will run out.
Metrics such as CPU and memoryload are pulled from monitoringtools, further informing capacityplanning.
Production: minimum standard for in-use workloads.
Test/dev: non-critical for in-progressworkloads.
Key management tools include
Compellent Storage Managementfor dynamic storage tiering andVMware vCenter.
Prepare for a future of hybrid clouds & cloud bursting
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Prepare for a future of hybrid clouds & cloud bursting
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The external cloud will continue to develop and mature as the enterprise focuses on internal clouddevelopment. Look for future management solutions to span internal and external clouds
This Solution Set has
focused on internal cloudcapacity management,because for most (76%),internal cloud developmentcomes first. However,opportunities in the externalpublic cloud will continue todevelop and mature over the
next three to five years.Opportunities include:
Hybrid orchestration across internal and externalcloud environments. Internal and externalcapacity will be connected and management willspan both.
External capacity may become a service tier. Forexample, an external infrastructure as a service
cloud could become the bronze tier, so long asredundancy and performance meet internalrequirements.
External cloud capacity will be used on demandto meet spikes in capacity need. This cloud
bursting (see right) will bring the open ended
scalability of external cloud to internalrequirements.
How Cloud Bursting Works
In a cloud bursting scenario, available and appropriatelyredundant capacity is maintained in a public cloud for spikesin need for capacity from internally hosted applications.
Capacityin Use
StandbyCapacity
RedundantCapacity
TotalCapacity
Goodenoughperforma
nce
CurrentNeed
FutureNeed
Capacity inExternal Cloud
Conclusions
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Conclusions
Capacity management isa critical process
In an internal cloud, theorganization bears the full burdenof all capacityused or unused.
Virtualization does not createcapacity. Its benefits can only befully realized with careful capacitymanagement.
Begin capacity management nowto prepare for an increasinglycloudy future.
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Capacity Planning
Cost Accounting
Capacity Management
Service Tiers
Start with business needs
Turn data center management
outside-in; think like a serviceprovider delivering IaaS to thebusiness.
Determine total servicerequirements as the total ofperformance, criticality, andgrowth.
Gather a team and documentapps and infrastructure toprepare for advanced capacitymanagement.
Follow the five steps todeveloping a capacity plan
Analyze current capacity,optimize the infrastructure,analyze impact, determinedemand, then develop a planthat takes future growth intoaccount.
Think of capacity as a gasgauge, and divide it into tiers foroptimum success.
Consider automation tools, butmake sure there is a process inplace for automation to havebenefit.
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