ITIL vs. MOF IT Capacity Management

This page describes capacity management from the perspective of the ITIL and other Service Management Standards.

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Benefits to Managing Capacity Proactively

The discipline of Capacity Management ensures that IT infrastructure is provided at the right time in the right volume at the right price, and ensuring that IT is used in the most efficient manner.

• Reduce the risk of service outages when not enough capacity is available to meet needs.
  Capacity Management provides better validation and justification of IT spending.

  Risk of mistakes is reduced when purchasing is proactive to business requirements rather reactive to allieviate emergencies.

• Reduce costs
  • Reduce unnecessary spare capacity by matching capacity to business need so that existing capacity is fully used.
  • Time-planned buying enables the organization to take advantage of vendors' sale prices not available anytime of the year as well as avoid rush charges for panic buying.
  • Planned volume buying enables the organization to take advantage of vendors' volume discounts .
  • Judicious timing avoids the waste of acquiring techonologyes that become quickly obsolete. With electronic equipment, more Capacity, features, and quality are available in the newest models for the same money.

Capacity Report Table of Contents

ITIL does not publish a separate book for the capacity management function.

This pseudo usecase diagram summarizes the Service Delivery function as defined by ITIL Service Management Standards. The output from capacity management include:

1. Management Summary
   • Cumulative ROI (Return on Investment) Summary
   • Previous Action Items Follow-up
   • Decisions Needed
   • New Action Items
2. Service Performance
   • Target vs. Actual Service Levels by Business Scenario
   • Service Workload (Throughput) and Performance Trends
   • Service Alerts and Incidents (Command and Special Causes)
   • Service Risks Management
   • Service Demand Forecasts and Schedules
   • Service Forecast Accuracy
3. Resource Utilization
   • Expected vs. Actual Resource Usage by Category / Item
   • Resource Capacity Usage Trends
   • Resource Alerts and Incidents
   • Resource Risks Management
   • Resource Forecasts and Schedules
   • Resource Forecast Accuracy
4. Cost & Revenue Summary
   • Planned vs. Unplanned Cost Trends
   • Cost & Revenue Exceptions
   • ROI Risks Management
   • Cash Flow Forecasts and Schedules
   • Cash Flow Forecast Accuracy
5. Audit Reports
6. Change Management
   • Service Level Management guidelines (Targets and Thresholds)
   • Application Sizing
   • Demand Management
   • Tuning assumptions and recommendations
   • Options for Process Improvement

Capacity Report Sub-Processes

The Capacity Report is the outcome of monitoring activities.

My Capacity Report outline is structured around three sub-processes to ITIL capacity management best practices:

• business capacity management (BCM) includes Stakeholder Review of Business Plans, Business Needs, IT Strategy, Forecasts, Trends, Financial Plans, Budgets, etc. to ensure that future business requirements for IT Services are considered, planned and implemented in a timely fashion according to financial management metrics such as sales effectiveness, market share, time to market, profit, cash flow, and return on investment (ROI);
• service capacity management (SCM) considers Service Reviews, the Service Catalog, Alerts, Changes, Problems, Service Monitoring, etc. to build a model used to ensure that the performance of all services (as detailed in SLA and SLR targets ) is monitored and measured, and that the collected data is recorded, analyzed, and reported;
• resource capacity management (RCM) considers Ops Schedules, Deployment Plans, Dev Plans, Incidents, Problems, Alerts, Changes, Resource Monitoring, etc. to build a model used to to ensure that all components within the IT Infrastructure (as finite resources) are monitored and measured, and that the collected data is recorded, analyzed, and reported.

These subprocesses share a common set of activities that are applied from different perspectives:

• Demand management *
• Workload management
• Performance Monitoring *
1. Analysis
2. Modeling (Modelling) *
3. Optimization
4. Change initiation
5. Service monitoring
6. Trend analysis

Application sizing *

The MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) recommends that Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) be broken down by the following categories of infrastructure:

• Service
• Application
• Middleware (includes database)
• Operating system
• Hardware
• Network (local area network)
• Facilities
• Egress (service supplied outside of IT, such as power, HVAC, and water)

Analysis of data aims to identify issues such as:

• Inappropriate distribution of workload across available resources
• Unexpected increase in transaction rate
• Contention (data, file, memory, processor)
• Inappropriate locking strategy
• Inefficient use of memory
• Inefficiencies in the application design

Output: Capacity Plan Table of Contents

The output from capacity management planning include:

1. Management Summary
   • ROI (Return on Investment) Summary
   • Previous Action Items Follow-up
   • Decisions Needed
   • New Action Items
2. Introduction to ITIL-based Capacity Management
   • Problems due to over or under Capacity
   • Problems due to reactive approaches
   • Benefits of Proactive Capacity Management
3. Scope of Plan (Assumptions)
   • Business Scenarios
   • Organization (Personnel)
   • IT Configuration Items In/Out of Scope
   • Methods used
     • Capacity Management Tools
     • Capacity Database (CDB)
     • Relationship with other disciplines
     • Performance Testing (Planned and ad hoc)
     • Modeling Trends for Forecasts
     • Presentation Methods (website)
4. Service
   • Business Scenarios
   • Service Catalogue Coverage
   • Baseline Service Workload (Throughput) and Performance
   • Service Alerts and Incidents (Command and Special Causes)
   • Service Risks Management Plan
   • Service Demand Forecasts and Schedules
5. Resources
   • Expected vs. Actual Resources by Category / Item
   • Resource Capacity Usage Trends
   • Resource Alerts and Incidents
   • Resource Risks Management
   • Resource Forecasts and Schedules
6. Costs & Revenues
   • Budgeted vs. Actual Cost Trends
   • Cost & Revenue Exceptions
   • ROI Risks Management
   • Cash Flow Forecasts and Schedules
7. Recommendations
   • Service Level Management guidelines (Targets and Thresholds)
   • Application Sizing
   • Demand Management
   • Tuning assumptions and recommendations
   • Options for Process Improvement

Inputs

Inputs into capacity management from many areas of the business to identify:

• what services are (or will be) required,
• what IT infrastructure is required to support these services,
• what level of Contingency will be needed, and
• what the cost of this infrastructure will be.

CM Objectives

Section 6.1 of the ITIL documentation outlines the capacity management process as encompassing the following:

• The monitoring of performance and throughput (workload) of IT Services and the supporting infrastructure components
• Undertaking tuning activities to make the most efficient use of existing resources.
• Understanding the demands currently being made for IT resources and
  producing forecasts for future requirements (demand and resources).
• Influencing the demand for resources, perhaps in conjunction with Financial Management.
• The production of a Capacity Plan which enables the IT Service provider to provide services of the quality defined in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Processes and Tasks

Capacity management processes includes:

• performance management, which optimization of existing resources, and
• capacity management, which ensures sufficient resources exist to meet forecasted requirements.

Capacity management tasks noted in Mindscape's map include:

1. Demand forecasting: Financial, physical
• Resource forecasting
2. Iterative activities: Monitor, analyze, tune, implement
   • Performance monitoring
   • Workload monitoring
3. Application sizing
4. Modeling: Analytical, simulation, trending

Using ITIL Best Practices to Create a Capacity Management Process October 1, 2003 by Chris Molloy, Senior Technical Staff Member IBM Global Services.

Responsibility Matrix

Based on ITIL Annex 6A:

Task	Description	A	B
1.	Ensures that appropropriate levels of monitoring resources and system performance are set, and the information recorded in a CBD is kept up-to-date and used by all parts of the Capacity Management process.	-	-
2.	Produces Capacity Plans in line with the organizatin's business planning cycle, Identifying Capacity requirements early enough to take account of procurement lead times.	-	-
3.	Documents the need for any increase or reduction in hardware based on SLRs and cost constraits.	-	-
4.	Produces regular management reports which include current usage of resources, trends, and forecast.	-	-
5.	Sizes all proposed new systems to determine the computer and network resources.	-	-
6.	Assesses new technology and its relevance to the organization in terms of performance and cost.	-	-
7.	Assesses new hardware and software products for use by Capacity Management that might improve the efficiency and effectiveness of processes.	-	-
8.	Carries out performance testing of new systems.	-	-
9.	Reports on performance against targest contained in SLAs.	-	-
10.	Maintains a knowledge of future demand for IT Services and predicts the effects of demand on performance service needs.	-	-
11.	Determines performance service levels that are maintainable and cost justified.	-	-
12.	Recommends tuning of systems and makes recommendations to IT management on the design and use of systems to help ensure optimum use of all hardware and operating system software resources.	-	-
13.	Recommends resolutions to performance related Incidents and Problems.	-	-
14.	Recommends to IT management when to employ Demand Management, to dampen Customer demand on system.	-	-
15.	Carries out ad-hoc performance and capacity studies from IT management.	-	-
16.	Ensures requirements for reliability and availability are taken into account in all Capacity Planning and sizing activity.	-	-
17.	Is represented on the CAB, assessing and authorizing changes.	-	-
18.	Ensures that regular and ad hoc audits are carried out on the Capacity Management process.	-	-