Overview of the Capacity Planning Process for Production Data Processing

n overview of techniques available to address capacity planning in the production data processing environment is presented. The production data processing system is briefly described and its capacity is quantijied. The measurement tools, reports, and data required to implement a capacity planning program are discussed. Modeling and prediction are placed in perspective with the overall objectives o f the capacity planning process. Personnel (managerial and technical) and organization considerations are also discussed. Production data processing is an automated approach to taking as input information required to run a business enterprise and processing it in accordance with certain use specifications. In this environment, information volumes can be quite large, and user demands for service very stringent. Therefore, the planning problems to be addressed are those of forecasting user workloads, determining the required computer capacity, and effectively and efficiently managing resources (people, hardware, software) to meet user service objectives. Computer capacity planning' " is a process developed to provide a systematic approach for understanding and predicting the capacity of production data processing systems. The basic concepts underlying capacity planning are not new. Capacity planning, as discussed in this paper, is basically a systematic method of bringing together many of the past performance management ideas and integrating them with current performance management and measurement technology. Capacity planning addresses the problems involved in managing computer resources , namely: Copyright 1980 by International Business Machines Corporation. Copying is permitted without payment of royalty provided that (1) each reproduction is done without alteration and (2) the Journul reference and IBM copyright notice are included on the first page. The title and abstract may be used without further permission in computer-based and other information-service systems. Permission to republish other excerpts should be obtained from the Editor.