Monitoring and Controlling Capacity Management by Anticlue

As with all things, once you have implemented Capacity Management there is a need to assure that the system is working and operating within quality standards. First one has to set the stage with assuring someone is accountable for the process. The accountable individual is normally the role of the capacity manger. The capacity manager monitors and controls the process, develops and maintains the capacity plan, and updates and reviews the capacity database.

The capacity manager works closely with the system, network, and application managers. The system, network, and application managers are accountable for assuring service level agreements are met, optimizing the current configuration and forecasting future needs.

There are a couple of common tools and techniques employed to monitor and control the Capacity Management processes. They are:

• Thresholds – Thresholds are monitored in order to predict business demand and expectations. If thresholds are breached, it is time to acquire additional capacity.
• Planned changes - Planned changes are reviewed and analyzed to anticipate increases or decreases of capacity utilization for both the short term and the long term.

As with most ITIL processes, capacity management is closely tied to the service support and service delivery processes. Capacity Management is closely intertwined with the following service support processes:

• Incident management - Incident management makes CM aware of incidents which were related to capacity problems. Capacity Management can provide checklist scripts for incident management to diagnose or solve capacity problems.
• Problem management – Problem management is supported by Capacity Management for its reactive and proactive roles. Capacity management supports root cause analysis through the use of Capacity Manager’s expertise.
• Change management – Change Management can provide information about the need for capacity and the impact of a change on the provision of a service. Information regarding changes may also be included in the capacity plan. Capacity Managemetn can submit requests for changes during the development of the plan.
• Release management – Release Management is support by Capacity Management through the distribution planning when the network is used for automatic or manual distribution.
• Configuration management – Configuration Management is closely tied to Capacity management through the data links between the Capacity Database (CDB) and the configuration management database (CMDB).

Capacity Management is closely related to business requirements. Assuring capacity is an important part of the planning process. Capacity Managements relationships with the service delivery processes are as follows:

• Service level management – Capacity Management advises service level management about the feasibility of service levels. It measures and monitors performance levels and provides information regarding possible changes to the agreed-upon service levels.
• Financial management - Capacity management planning supports business case planning for budgeting and investments, cost-benefit analysis, and other financial investment decisions. Capacity Management also provides essential information for charging for capacity-related services, such as the allocation of the network capacity.
• IT service continuity management - Capacity Management specifies the minimum capacity needed to continue a service in the event of a disaster. The capacity needs of IT service continuity management should be constantly reviewed to ensure they reflect day-to-day changes to the operating environment.
• Availability management - Performance and capacity problems can cause unavailability because poor performance is typically viewed as unavailability. CM and availability management have similar goals and use some of the same methods, such as component failure impact analysis and fault tree analysis.

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