Resources

When it comes to Capacity Management our people know their stuff.
Here are a collection of their thoughts and expertise, from a capacity planning perspective.




Capacity Management Maturity Repeatable to DefinedThe second part in our Capacity Management maturity series will provide a quick recap on what being graded at Repeatable means, but also provides an emphasis on what is involved when maturing to a Defined level...
NetAppOver the last few years NetApp storage has made great inroads into the Enterprise Storage market. It’s become essential for Capacity Managers to view their NetApp storage data alongside all their other infrastructure and business data, enabling them to see all aspects of capacity that may affect a service...
ClusterUnderstanding how a counter is derived can be important to knowing its limitations and usefulness. This webinar outlines the importance of understanding what performance counters represent, and how your own calculated metrics can be used to enhance performance and capacity analysis...
Capacity Management MaturityThis white paper will discuss the concept of Capacity Management Maturity , how is the concept of maturity defined and what are the building blocks that reflect a mature process or function within an organization....
CMISThe term CMIS, derived from ITIL, is synonymous with Capacity Management, while in fact it is the cornerstone of the capacity management process. However, one part of the acronym seems to confuse – S. Stands for Store right? Or is it System? Confused?...
Capacity Management 101Management of a physical or virtual environment relies upon the management of the underlying technology. Let’s talk about the ways that we monitor CPU, memory, disk, and network usage and discuss ways of eliminating server and VM sprawl in today’s IT environment...
Cloud Capacity ManagementThe inclusion of the Cloud infrastructure within IT requires the Capacity Management discipline to be extended. The purpose of this webinar is to discuss the variables that one needs to consider when extending Capacity Management to the Cloud...
It's all about the CMISFormally referred to as the Capacity Management Information System (CMIS), and considered a subset of the Configuration Management System (CMS), it is unlikely to be one physical database and more likely to be a number of logical databases that store capacity and performance related data...
Capacity Management Maturity Initial to RepeatableThe start of this Capacity Management maturity series takes a deep-dive into practical steps you can take that will enhance your current activities to ensure that core capacity management information is delivered every time...
Cloud Capacity ManagementThe inclusion of the Cloud infrastructure within IT requires the Capacity Management discipline to be extended. The purpose of this webinar is to discuss the variables that one needs to consider when extending Capacity Management to the Cloud...
Performance Management made easyThis webinar examines the problem solved by application performance management (APM) tools, shows how efforts to monitor and troubleshoot complex applications without good visibility can be very tedious and time consuming...
Capacity Management Maturity Maslow and youThis white paper will discuss Capacity Management Maturity from two different viewpoints, Capability Maturity Model Integration and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, although it will quickly become obvious that there are similarities between the two lines of thinking...
Virtualization oversubscriptionOver the past year I’ve had a number of mildly frustrating conversations with organizations. These tend to be newer and/or don’t have a good history of Capacity Management. The frustration has been around ‘Oversubscription’ in virtualized environments....
Capacity Planning from the ground upDetermining where to start with building a capacity management capability requires evaluating what is possible in the near and long term, defining what needs to be done and how to do it requires the evaluation of many factors...
Hardware's a commodityMany organizations have a Capacity Management process or function in place, but no practical way to assess the effectiveness or even the strengths and weaknesses of the process or function...
Cost saving ES/1For most IBM z Systems users today, it is a case of ‘pay for peak’: monthly license charge (MLC) is set by peak MSU consumption. A short sharp peak in usage leads to a heavy charge. More than ever this means that everyone benefits from some help...
Top 5 concerns for unix and linuxSince UNIX systems were developed back in the 1970’s, things as you’d expect have moved on a long way. Single CPU systems, the size of washing machines, have been replaced with many racks of multi-core (hyper-threaded) blade servers...
Capacity Management 101Capacity Management is simply making sure you have the capacity for the business at all times, without it costing a fortune. Carrying out Capacity Management in a cost-effective manner is very important as it’s very easy to do...
Performance Management made easyThis paper examines the problem solved by application Performance Management (APM) tools. It shows how efforts to monitor and troubleshoot complex applications without good visibility can be very tedious and time consuming...
VMware cluster plannerPhysical hardware resources used by VMware exist at the host level, and hosts are typically grouped into clusters. Virtual machines can be moved between hosts in a cluster to balance resource usage...
Capacity Planning and Forecasting using Analytic ModelingThis session is designed to discuss the processes and information required for Analytical Modeling and the Reporting needs to determine a proper baseline for the modeling scenario you wish to forecast to ensure you achieve your planning goals...
Capacity Planning and Forecasting using Analytic ModelingThis webinar is a case study of how to mature a Capacity Management process from nothing to an effective operation that provides consistent value to the business...
Data is nothing more than 1’s and 0’s. It’s what we do with it that makes it powerful. We can collect or capture as much data as we want to from our systems, from our business level, from our service delivery level and store it but it’s what we do with this data that is the important thing...
Cost saving ES/1Some people say there's no need for Capacity Management anymore - to them it's an unnecessary expense in a world where adding capacity is as easy as adding a few blades or flipping a switch. But is that what we've been all about all these years?..
The world’s leading companies rely on athene® Capacity Management software and our consulting and training services as key elements of their IT Service Management and Service Delivery...
How is memory used in a VMware vSphere environment? Covering: Memory management concepts, memory reclamation and over commitment, how limits are enforced, what memory metrics to monitor, and guest virtual machine memory reporting...
What’s new in athene® 10.20 - Improved Portal features - Updated and modernized APR and Advisor - Acquire for UNIX/Linux - Additional metrics for Oracle, IBM z Systems and SQL Server - Windows process reporting by username - Inherited locale settings in the Portal...
Before athene® was implemented, a majority of staff time was spent collecting data, analyzing it and producing manual reports. Now, only about 10% of their time is spent in this way, and the rest is devoted to growth strategy and trend analysis...
Capacity Management has a number of parallels across all platforms. In this webinar we look at the data available from UNIX and Linux platforms, and how we can use that data to get the answers we need for Capacity Management...
With the arrival of Cloud and business focus on service based reporting, capturing data has never been more important. What are the challenges of capturing the sorts of data required to answer the demands of the business?...
athene® ES/1 Advisor provides daily system analysis of your IBM z Systems environment. All necessary metrics are collected for a particular system, including areas typically requiring collection and analysis by multiple third-party products...
Hyper-V starts to look like a real contender for virtualizing key production, development and testing environments. This webinar provides an essential guide for people who have an interest in understanding the performance and capacity implications of Windows/Hyper-V...
Crucial to the success of a service, to IT, and to the business. Capacity Management today has the same goals and desired outcomes as it did decades ago – providing adequate capacity at controlled costs, both now and in the future...
ES/1 - Nighttime batch processing was dragging on into the start time of online service on peak business days. The processing that should have been completed within 5 hours took as long as 6 hours, preventing the online service from starting on time...
Covering the potential (and potentially scary) triggers that can force a Company to quickly implement a Capacity Management process. Using a ‘real world’ merger & acquisition scenario...
Covering the Capacity Management process according to best practice guidelines, learn about the skills and tools needed to properly mature your process – from monitoring and measuring to analysis, prediction and reporting...
If you want to experience the benefits of Capacity Management but not the need to manage a software and database implementation, then Metron’s athene® Software as a Service solution provides a secure, hassle-free alternative to an onsite software implementation...
The longer VMware virtualization has been around, the more focus there is on making efficiency savings for the organization. This is where the Capacity Manager really needs to understand the technology, how to monitor it, and how to decide what headroom exists....
athene® monitors all the critical elements of your environment through a combination of proprietary agent technology and data from external sources. athene® provides a comprehensive range of options to view, analyse and report on the collected data...
ES/1 - The CPU of our client’s system had been overloaded for two weeks, running consistently at a 100% utilization rate. Overnight batch processing dragged on into online service hours in the daytime, contributing to a vicious cycle of slow online response...
Capacity Management for System z is not a silo activity within an enterprise.  Every Capacity Management decision is a business decision, and with that in mind, there are either positive or negative cost implications with each decision made...
The real goal of Capacity Management is to fulfil the business requirements and meet your service level agreements, both now and in the future. So what key trends do you need to keep an eye on?...
Many organizations have significant VMware implementations in production. It has already matured into ‘just’ another environment we have to manage. The time is approaching where you have to decide how best to make use of what you have, before the next technology wave washes over you...
Capacity Management is responsible for ensuring adequate capacity is available at all times. athene®’s open architecture goes beyond this traditional ‘silo’ approach and has been designed to directly support the three critical levels of ITIL® Capacity Management...
ES/1 - Our client was paying charges to the vendor by consumed MSUs (Million Service Units) of the WLC (Workload License Charges) and the charges kept rising as their processing volume increased...
To help deliver better business IT services, many organisations have aligned themselves to the ITIL framework methodology which helps streamline your ITSM processes to improve service delivery and overall profitability...
Doing capacity management for storage can be difficult with the many complex and varied technologies being used. Given all of the options available for data storage strategy, a clear understanding of the architecture is important in identifying performance and capacity concerns...
What you need (and what you don’t need) when establishing a formal Capacity Management process, concluding with a roadmap to success...
SharePath empowers IT Operations to apply Application Performance Management to their entire application stack. It is used to monitor and trace through web-servers, proxy-servers, rich-clients, C/C++ based applications, service buses, and more...
After an introduction to VMware's Virtual Infrastructure (vSphere) environment and Cloud Computing, we discuss how Capacity Management provides the means to spot potential Storm Clouds far in advance  and more specifically, how you can avoid them...
Capacity Management consists of Service, Business and Resource Level Management. If your Capacity Management process complies with ITIL® guidelines you can be assured that it is beyond reproach, cost-effective, reliable, accountable and transparent...
ES/1 - When planning IT investment for the medium-term business plan, our client recognized that there would be the possibility of running short of disk space. Their vendor was asked for its recommendation and proposed adding disk devices costing $320,000...
This webinar discusses how capacity optimization of your environments can ensure green projects deliver cost-effective solutions and how mature ITIL processes are essential in maintaining any green initiatives moving forward...
This paper describes the practical approach used at a number of sites to introduce and implement effective Performance Assurance. This embodies both performance management and capacity planning and is essentially Capacity Management as defined in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)...
Systems sometimes fail completely due to capacity issues or manifest in slow end-user response times caused by excessively high system utilization. Downtime like this costs your organization money...
SharePath can provide significant benefits to the business, by understanding the volume, flow and speed of business transactions through the IT services...
With several trading divisions and thousands of users across the globe, our client was receiving complaints from users about response times on the company’s main business application caused by frequent periods of 100% utilization...
Capacity Management disciplines have been an integral part of managing the mainframe from the days of MVS. The disciplines for both distributed and virtual environments have similar and different characteristics, as does the mainframe...
With many business critical systems running on SAP, our client needed to ensure that one centralized SAP system would be able to maintain current service levels and have enough headroom to encompass new locations as they were added to their portfolio...
Even with the relatively low cost of hardware, our case study shows that there are still considerable benefits for businesses in using solid capacity planning and how a relatively short consultancy engagement was able to save £500k in deferred expenditure...
Stakeholders need confidence that expenditure in the business is being used to best effect. Ensuring that processes and procedures align with industry good practices is a way to provide that confidence....
It’s not enough to simply ‘over-provision’ to ensure that you have enough capacity. In real terms that isn’t Capacity Management at all, it’s simply wasting money...
This webinar presents a high-level discussion of using correlation in practice and does not attempt a rigorous mathematical explanation of the underlying statistics. We review basic concepts of correlation, significance coefficients, limitations of correlation, data types, and examples....
In order to correlate Green IT with the business we must first understand: the drivers, the technologies, the challenges I’ll be taking a look at all these and then talking about the move to a more mature Capacity Management process and how this can be achieved...
Whether or not your organization has a formal Capacity Management function defined, the activities specified within the ITIL® Capacity Management guidelines are being carried out either informally or formally...
Doing capacity management for storage can be difficult with many complex and varied technologies being used.  Given all of the options available for data storage strategy, a clear understanding of the architecture is important in identifying performance and capacity concerns...
Following a rigorous evaluation process, Metron’s athene® Performance Management and Capacity Planning software was selected by Capgemini as the tool of choice for their Outsourcing Division...
Reporting is a cornerstone of the capacity and performance management process, especially when it identifies problems before they happen. Enterprise datacenters continue to evolve with new technology and capabilities...
Automatic Reporting enables the athene® user to produce regular performance reports, which are generated and published with no user intervention. This is ideal for periodic reports and exception reports produced when performance breaches user defined thresholds...
For a given use of money in an enterprise, the ROI is how much profit or cost saving is realized. An ROI calculation is sometimes used along with other approaches to develop a business case for a given proposal. Showing the outlay up front and the value and returns on-going to your Organization is key...
Storage Area Networks (SAN) have become ubiquitous in the modern datacenter. Today’s modern storage environment consists of a complex mix of equipment that interconnects systems to centralized storage...
We recognised right at the start of the project that given the complexity of the system, its business critical nature and level of transactions, that we needed to proactively monitor and manage its performance...
Direct measurement of component properties is the foundation of evaluating a systems behavior. This webinar outlines the importance of understanding what performance counters represent, and how your own calculated metrics can be used to enhance performance and capacity analysis...
This paper discusses the Metron approach to expertly capturing and correlating transaction-level data, and how this information can be used by enterprises to determine whether they have sufficient capacity at both the service and component levels to meet the needs of the business...
The performance database at the heart of athene® accepts all relevant data, from both athene specific capture agents and from imported user data. athene® assists you in mining this database to create performance reports for management...
In today’s tough economic climate the need for capacity management expertise is even more important. Even with the relatively low cost of hardware, there are still considerable benefits for businesses in using solid capacity planning to save big money in deferred purchases...
“Business Intelligence is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making.”...
Once an organization is capturing data from all the key components and storing data on transactions, centralized storage and networks, the Capacity Manager will be able to make key recommendations looking at services and applications from every possible angle...
This is a high level session that will cover the basics of what the aim of IT Capacity Management is, what the capacity manager actually does, and how this fits with other IT functions. Capacity management has recently worked its way up the list of concerns that senior IT managers have...
On the face of it, the meaning of the term ‘server consolidation’ seems pretty straightforward. The most obvious interpretation would be that it means having fewer servers and by implication cutting costs. And there’s the rub!...
Combining seamless capture of Oracle and operating system data into one solution enables the database administrator can easily understand performance issues within Oracle. Better understanding means fewer performance crises and continuity of high quality end-user service levels...
KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of an activity that the organization engages in. Typically they are measured against an operational goal, such as SLAs and can be used to reflect success of meeting a goal as well as progress made towards improving the success of a business or technical activity....
A look at the metrics you need, processor scheduling, how to measure memory and disk storage latency, why OS monitoring can be misleading and how you can calculate headroom in your VM’s...
athene® provides analysis of current and recent system performance to identify and investigate problems and identify what courses of action are required to restore service levels...
Part of the Gap Analysis and a key facet of 360° Capacity Management is understanding the types of data that must be present in the CMIS in order to provide that every-angle view critical to success. This webinar covers the five key steps needed when implementing 360° Capacity Management...
Initial guidance for people that haven’t implemented or are in the process of implementing ITIL v3 Capacity Management and have an infrastructure fully or partly comprised of VMware technology...
Performance can only be predicted accurately by using advanced mathematical modelling techniques such as those developed and proved by Metron. athene® confers the advantages of these methods without requiring any detailed knowledge of the mathematical algorithms used...
As Capacity Managers, we are tasked with providing IT purchase and configuration recommendations to management that will support expected changes in the business. There are times where the information can be provided informally, while other times a formal document and presentation are needed...
Doing capacity management for storage can be difficult with the many complex and varied technologies being used. Given all of the options available for data storage strategy, a clear understanding of the architecture is important in identifying performance and capacity concerns...
Topics include Performance Management and Best Practices for Virtual Machines, CPU, Memory, Networking, Storage. And answers the question: Can my Application be virtualized?..
Use athene® for IBM z Systems to plan future capacity requirements based on accurate, objectively acquired data, as well as to report regularly and automatically on a 24/7 basis on the overall performance of the system...
As the IBM z Systems operating system continues to develop, you are seeing more functionality added to provide a better user experience.  With all these changes and innovations, there are challenges that need to be considered as it relates to the mainframe...
Virtualization underpins Cloud Computing by presenting and controlling computing resources to users (or clients) by these shared pools of resources. However, it is not just the ability to provide resources and control usage, Virtualization also provides two key components of Cloud Computing...
athene® ES/1 Advisor provides daily system analysis of your IBM z Systems environment. All necessary metrics are collected for a particular system, including areas typically requiring collection and analysis by multiple third-party products...
In the modern economy, important business decisions are normally made after analyzing data of some sort. In large companies, the importance of analyzing data for decision-making has created a whole field in IT called Business Intelligence...
This paper discusses the changes in Windows/Hyper-V 2012 and what that means from the perspective of the business and managing the capacity. • Technology recap • Updates to the functionality • Comparison between VMware and Hyper-V • Metrics and Monitoring • Top tips for managing Hyper-V capacity...
Many organizations use XenServer as their open-source virtualization platform for managing cloud, server and desktop virtual infrastructures of mission critical applications. This business critical information needs to be incorporated in to the overall capacity management planning process...
This presentation reflects the current and future practice of capacity management and considers why it might be different in different countries. The webinar concentrates on the EU, USA and Japan, with particular emphasis on Japan as it is possibly the least known of the three...
Beyond CPU virtualization the next critical component is Memory virtualization. This involves sharing the physical system memory and dynamically allocating it to virtual machines. Virtual machine memory virtualization is very similar to the virtual memory support provided in modern operating systems...
Your doctor would probably recommend an annual checkup. You only risk your health, mission critical systems which perform poorly or inconsistently damage productivity and profitability...
As the IT environment continues to increase in complexity, performing silo Capacity Management is dangerous to the enterprise. A Capacity Planner needs to ensure all elements of the infrastructure are taken into account...
This paper will cover the following:

1.Dangers with OS Metrics
2. Ready Time
3. Monitoring Memory
4. Disk Latency
5. Trending Clusters...
Your Servers need a HealthCheck as often as you do! When did you last have one? HealthCheck enables you to manage your IT investment proactively, providing a consistent and acceptable service at a known and controlled cost...
Do we fully understand the technology to be able to perform effective Capacity Management? Covering the differences between Unix & Linux. Cloud, Big Data and more...
We’re trying to look at what is going to happen in the future. The business may be adding an application, reducing the use of an application or even merging a datacentre. Our job is to make sure that we have the right amount of resources available...
Whether you simply want to ensure that when you have consolidated two or more servers you can meet your service performance obligations or you want to consider a broad range of options over multiple servers let Metron provide you with the answers...
Capacity Planning is a key business service enabling the understanding and management of costs related to IT enabled functions. By profiling the performance of business applications in terms of the systems resources they consume, it is possible to establish the current costs of services provided...
A practical approach to the problem of trying to define the performance aspects of a Service Level Agreement. It explains how Capacity Management techniques can be used to manage the performance aspects and outlines typical implementations and benefits...
We’ve put together a quick list of the Top 5 Do’s and Don’ts for VMware which we hope you’ll find useful...
What you buy across the cloud could vary from simple Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) through to full Software As A Service (SaaS) such as salesforce.com. What is without doubt, is that the range of environments you will have to manage will become ever more complex...
Performance Management , Performance Engineering, Service Level Planning, Network Planning and Performance Audit. These disciplines are all considered and discussed in terms of the top ten perceived problems in their implementation, defined as dilemmas in terms of “myths” and “realities”...
Metron is a VMware Technology Alliance Partner and has integrated support for VMware in the athene® product suite. In the IT world, the introduction of new technology to solve one set of problems usually introduces another set and virtualization is no exception....
Solaris can clone the base operating system to create what is known as Containers. This presentation specifically covers the main differences between Zones and Containers, their rival comparatives, Process and Extended Accounting and associated benefits...
This paper is motivated by many years' experience of delivering technical presentations, and of being on the receiving end of other people's efforts. The first objective is to share some understanding of what makes for a successful presentation. The second is to look at the technology of report production...
Microsoft’s key virtualization solution moves ever closer to its main rival VMware. This webinar provides an essential guide for people who have an interest in understanding the performance and capacity implications of Windows/Hyper-V...


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