Capacity Planning: A Non-technical View St. Louis CMG Tuesday, August 24, 2010 Jim Glauert

Capacity Planning:A Non-technical View

St. Louis CMGTuesday, August 24, 2010Jim Glauert

St. Louis CMG August 24, 2010 2

Typical Capacity Planning Presentations

• Trending• Regression• Queuing Theory• Application/Network Topology• Benchmarking• Other technical stuff

Capacity Planning: A Non-technical View Jim Glauert


This Presentation

This presentation has nothing to do with any of those things



Why Capacity Plan?

• Nobody likes surprises• Most organizations work within a budget– You want to insure your part of the organization

gets its “fair share” of the budget• Running out of capacity can impact the

organization’s bottom line• It gives you a job



What Is Your Role as Capacity Planner?

• Source of unbiased information• Presenter of options• Provide guidance for future direction• Someone to blame when there’s not enough

capacity



What Is The Scope Of Your Plan?

• CPU• Disk• Tape• Network• Floor space• Power consumption• Single platform• Multiple platformsCapacity Planning: A Non-technical View Jim Glauert


Who Is The Immediate Audience?

• CEO• CIO• CTO• VP• Department Head• Facility Manager• My Boss



Who Is The Ultimate Audience?

• CEO• CIO• CTO• VP• Department Head• Facility Manger• My Boss



What Is The Impact Of Trickle-up?

• Challenger Example• State explicitly what is– Fact– Probable Expectation– Unexpected

• State the impact of these scenarios



Where Do I Get Information?

• Technical data sources are a good place but this is a non-technical presentation

• Organization chart• Application owners• Business owners• Help desk• Project review boards• Budgets and business forecastsCapacity Planning: A Non-technical View Jim Glauert


What Do I Ask?

• How’s it going?• What’s new?• What works?• What doesn’t work?• Changes in user base• Artificial constraints ($)



What Language?

• MIPS• CPU seconds• Cores• Tapes• Disk• KB/GB/PB• $• Relative %Capacity Planning: A Non-technical View Jim Glauert


What Do I Do With This Information?

• Apply it to the “techie stuff”– Adjust growth percentages– Add stepwise changes– Turn the crank and see the new projections

• Double check with areas that are changing a great deal. Validate you heard what they said and they understand how it impacts the plan.

• Feed it up the food chain



Eliminate Future Surprises

• Provide regular feedback to those you survey– Chargeback– $ impact – Percentage of the IT budget



Use The 80/20 Rule

• Survey the biggest users the most often• Be aware of changes they are making (new

releases of software)



Play Johnny Appleseed

• Dedicate some time in your user surveys to advertise the latest technology

• Make sure they understand the direction your organization is going and what they can do to follow

• Try to make connections between the business and the applications

• Sharing your knowledge is the best way to get them to share their knowledge



Measure Results

• Accuracy over time– Off 5% per month compounds to 80% off for the

year• Budget impact• Number of phone calls



Advertise Success

• Point out the timeliness of changes driven by your forecast

• Measure savings of deferred upgrades



Know Who To Blame

• http://despair.com/blame.html• Explain unexpected capacity changes• Measure the impact of hardware changes on

your workload (are MIPS on the old box equal to MIPS on the new box?)

• Provide feedback often enough to shrink the window for unexpected capacity changes


http://despair.com/blame.html


Live To Forecast Another Day

• Compare your forecast to a straight-line growth forecast. Did you do better?

• Checkout “Forecasting 101” by Michael Gilliland of SAS: http://www.sas.com/reg/web/corp/907017 or http://www.sas.com/resources/asset/slides.pdf


http://www.sas.com/reg/web/corp/907017



http://www.sas.com/resources/asset/slides.pdf

http://www.sas.com/resources/asset/slides.pdf

Documents

Capacity Planning: A Non-technical View St. Louis CMG Tuesday, August 24, 2010 Jim Glauert