Getting Started
The first thing you must do to get started with a capacity management plan is to establish a baseline – answer the question: “What is my capacity utilization today?” To answer this question, you must first determine the busiest, recurring period within a reasonable timeframe. For many customers, there is usually a 1-hour period of each day that is typically the busiest. Moreover, there can be busier days of the week (for example Monday vs. Wednesday); busier days of the month (last business day of the month) or busier weeks of the year (for example, the first week in January for insurance companies, or for the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the first two week of April). These traditionally busy hours, days, or weeks represent the most taxing period on the deployment; these are the periods during which a capacity utilization calculation is best because you always want to ensure that your deployment can handle the worst.
The steps to getting started are:
- Set up basic sampling (daily).
Sample the performance counter values: CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, Call and Unified Communications (UC) Application Traffic
- Determine the busy period.
Identify the recurring busy period – worst case scenario – by: - Per Component
- Solution Wide
- Establish a baseline of utilization for the target period.
- Determine hardware capacity utilization
- Identify components with high capacity utilization
- Generate a recurring collection plan.
Devise a plan that is repeatable – such as automated – that can be done on a weekly basis whereby samples are obtained during the busiest hour of the week.
After you establish a baseline and identify a busy hour, daily sampling is no longer necessary; you must sample only during the busy hour on a weekly basis. However, if regular reporting shows that the busy hour may have changed, then you must complete daily sampling again so that you can identify the new busy hour. After you identify the new busy hour, weekly sampling during the busy hour can resume.