Capacity Planning in Distributed Environments Dr Bernie Domanski The Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM) & City University of New York/CSI Performance.

Capacity Planning in Capacity Planning in Distributed EnvironmentsDistributed Environments

Dr Bernie DomanskiDr Bernie DomanskiThe Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM) &The Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM) &

City University of New York/CSICity University of New York/CSI

Performance Analysis & Prediction -- Made Easy

©B. Domanski,1997. All Rights Reserved 2

Should Capacity Planning Be Should Capacity Planning Be Treated With the Same Reverence Treated With the Same Reverence

As in the Past?As in the Past?

Let’s all sing the hymn -

“But That’s How We’ve Always Done It.”


Objectives & AgendaObjectives & Agenda

View IT as a Service Provider; focus on service delivery for the survival of the company;

Does doing CP the same old way make sense because “That’s How We’ve Always Done It”?

Does the mainframe costing model make sense today?

When does make sense to do CP ?

There are alternatives to complex tools that model down to the disk revolution.

The Key MessageThe Key Message

CP in a distributed environment should allow IT to make intelligent, cost-effective decisions regarding the resources required that will rapidly enhance the service given to its customers.


Moore’s Law - Capacity Moore’s Law - Capacity Doubles Every 18 MonthsDoubles Every 18 Months

Intel Microprocessor Evolution

0.1

1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

1000000

10000000

100000000

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Year

# of

Transistors

1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

1000000

10000000

100000000

4004 8080 8088 80286 80386 80486 Pentium PC2000?

MIPS

MIPS

# of Transistors


Service DeliveryService Delivery

• Timely delivery of services to customers

• Global view of resource use• Cost mainaining a CP staff - what is

the ROI? Cost of studying vs. just buying!

• The difference for making mistakes is orders of magnitude different in price.


What’s the Real Reason to Do What’s the Real Reason to Do Capacity Planning?Capacity Planning?• If mission-critical business

applications become overloaded, • Then poor performance could have a

very serious consequence: • Revenue can be lost if dissatisfied

customers move to the competition.• If you can't do it right yourself, pay

someone else to do it for you!


• Providing too much capacity? Ties up $$$

• When is CP done? If that new appl could negatively impact customers

• Why is CP done? To be competitive; new features/functions implies sizing the underlying architecture correctly

• What about business vs. technical requirements? Needs are ASAP and cheap => use modeling for broad evaluations

Key QuestionsKey Questions


• Success is a lousy teacher - Bill Gates• Out-of-date? 8-track tape player,

vacuum tube television, or the monolithic mainframe computer.

• The key to understanding mistakes is the need to initiate rather than to follow trends. Let’s look at some actual history:

Scaleability and CompatibilityScaleability and Compatibility


HistoryHistory

• 50’s / 60’s: Different machines/op. Systems for different computing purposes

• 65: IBM/Tom Watson => scaleable 360 architecture; you could move your work up

• DEC/Ken Olsen => PDP alternative; VAX in 77 offered scaleability too


What’s the Lesson Here?What’s the Lesson Here?

• IBM & DEC saw a need that business had … – to fill incremental computing needs in

different ways ...– … without having to waste prior IT

investments• This same need is still with us today!• Need more computing power? Get it for

the mission-critical application software


Market-driven CompatibilityMarket-driven Compatibility

• Originally is was difficult and expensive to “change brands”

• Amdahl, HDS, StorageTek, EMC => where would we be today?

• Proliferation of UNIX • IBM PC clones - Look at Apple!• Internet acceptance: Netscape, IE cross

platforms• JAVA allows dynamic distributed

systems


CP is Driven by New BusinessCP is Driven by New Business• What Drives CP for Distributed

Systems?– Scaleable architectures– Market-driven compatibility

• The key: the network - it’s the glue!• CP becomes less about counting

MIPS, &• … becomes more about being driven

by anticipated new business that has to be processed


WhadaWeWant?WhadaWeWant?

• we want to scale our applications up to process more work;

• we want them to run on the new hardware we acquire;

• we need to connect applications (i.e. data) that currently exist on different platforms; and

• we don’t want to re-invent or convert anything, if we can help it, to keep our costs down and our productivity up.


Bill Gates -Bill Gates -

“It’s a little hard to appreciate how far we’ve come from the good old days where just to get the sales report formatted in a nice way, you might wait nine months! …

we’ve really gone way beyond anything that ever happened on the mainframe. …

you really will be able to do simple, multiserver applications. Just sit down, write a few lines of business logic, and boom - connect all that up.”


Sam Greenblatt - CA’s Senior VP of Sam Greenblatt - CA’s Senior VP of Advanced TechnologyAdvanced Technology

“Integrating application, system and network management is helpful only if it yields useful business information.

Nobody cares whether or not a system is down if it doesn’t impact their business.”


Is Capacity Planning a Is Capacity Planning a CheckoffCheckoff Item? Item?

• Rather than burden the planner with commodity shopping, users took on that responsibility.

• Do we even need CP any more?– it might be easier to just buy new gear

when you need it, period, and not do any Capacity Planning at all!

– Consider, too, the cost of doing a CP study


More Important QuestionsMore Important Questions• Is the network yielding adequate

performance? • What should we get/do if it isn’t?• How are scaleable distributed appl’s

built?• How many more users can be added

while preserving response time? • We seek a new perspective that is

more closely tied with application-specific measurement.


Key to CP SuccessKey to CP Success

• Delivery of IT services, where ...• Scaleability and compatibility are key.• Deploying new applications on a specific

architecture may be wonderful today, but

• … may become disastrous tomorrow if that architecture becomes a dinosaur and new/faster/cheaper gear is available.


YOU MUST ...YOU MUST ...• become application savvy• understand the network.• focus attention identifying the parts of

an application that won’t scale up well• offer alternative solutions.• keep compatibility across platforms at

the forefront of your thinking.• be able to anticipate bottlenecks and

propose alternative components


Tools to Help Find How Much Capacity is Tools to Help Find How Much Capacity is NeededNeeded

• Cottage industry originated for the mainframe

• Costs: $20K = $120K (*MXG)• Not meant for distributed applications• No end-to-end response time

measurement• Queuing models ignored the network• No standout predictor of workload growth


Needed Measurement ToolsNeeded Measurement Tools

• Populate a PDB with data from distributed applications

• Display status of every resource in the distributed environment + drill-down

• Need summarized data across systems for trending

• Need simulation models along with queuing


Just-in-TimeJust-in-Time Capacity Capacity

• Use the tools …– monitors– collections of performance data– models

• … to find when to add more resources

• Adding at the right time implies:– no interruption in service quality– no paying for services before they are

needed


Costing for Distributed SystemsCosting for Distributed Systems

• A great advantage is being able to buy needed capacity in small increments.

• Scaleability is key for capacity planning• You buy enough capacity to do your

processing now ...– if additional capacity is required in the

future, – then it is acquired at a reduced unit-cost– because of the constant improvement in

price/performance ratios.


Is Costing That Simple?Is Costing That Simple?

• Incur both acquisition and installation costs.

• Over time, you incur operational costs (licensing fees, support personnel, and maintenance).


What Happens When Additional What Happens When Additional Capacity Is Needed?Capacity Is Needed?

• Yes, you acquire a bigger server, but• Most companies would rollover the

server• Causes a cascading effect, … costs that

have to be incurred when installing each old machine in a new place, e.g. installing new software, testing, support personnel costs, etc.


Leilani AllenLeilani Allen

”By the year 2000, it will cost more to keep old technology than to upgrade.”

Bottom Line: change the focus of financial mgmt strategies from acquisition.

The realities of the life-cycle of equipment dictate that ongoing operational costs demand more attention (consider rollover)


Service LevelsService Levels

• Service level measures should be reported by business unit and application - – availability, – response times and – workload volumes

• Obstacles: – client instrumentation– different communication paths/protocols


ARMARM• Transaction instrumentation becomes

the applications’ responsibility• ARM SDK addresses appl’s written in

– C/C++, - Visual Basic, – MicroFocus COBOL, - Delphi

• Approach systems management from the end-to-end appl. workload perspective, rather than as a collection of physical components.


Summary & ThoughtsSummary & Thoughts

• The critical questions we must face --– Is CP helping IT deliver the best

service possible to its customers?– Are you building scaleable

architectures that have market-driven compatibility?


More Key Questions to Ask More Key Questions to Ask Yourself !Yourself !• Perhaps a “checkoff” item CP philosophy

may prove to be a real cost saver• Include the true costs associated with

adding incremental capacity. • Without application-level

instrumentation across platforms, service-level management across the enterprise may not be possible


More of What We NeedMore of What We Need• Reporting software must manage the

volume of customer data across platforms,• It must address the network, the client and

the server. • We need graphical modeling tools to make it

easier to define the network• Modeling tools must be able to model any

combination of hardware & software• Need predictions of IT service and usage

from a global perspective as well as a detailed focused perspective


That’s It For Now!That’s It For Now!

Thanks for listeningAny questions???

Dr Bernie DomanskiPhone: 732-303-1500

Fax: 1503

Email:

[email protected]

Capacity Planning in Distributed Environments Dr Bernie Domanski The Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM) & City University of New York/CSI Performance.

Documents

compatibility slide

easy slide

new business

cp staff

capacity planning

key message cp

new gear

new appl