SNT Environment Capacity Management
Capacity management in the data communications environment can be approached in two ways:
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Capacity management in the data communications environment can be approached in two ways:
- Workload Growth Analysis
- Service Degradation Analysis
Workload growth analysis is an extension of the traditional utilization-centered, capacity management strategy which has been successfully employed in the mainframe environment. Workload growth analysis is particularly effective in the early life of a given network configuration where load balancing may be a key performance improvement strategy.
Service degradation analysis interprets network capacity in terms of the ability to deliver network services in a timely manner. In some cases, service levels vary in inverse proportion to network load. In these cases, poor service may limit network utilization ("...response is so bad we don't use it...") well below the threshold of utilization overload as indicated by a workload growth study.
The trend format of both the workload and utilization reports provided with the
MICS Network Analyzer
are designed to help you implement either of these strategies.One area of particular concern is the group of communications control units (and their associated NCPs) which make up the network backbone. Over-utilization and its associated service degradation tend to occur first in the backbone because the traffic is concentrated there. Close attention should be paid to the percentage utilization and time in slowdown on these CCUs.
The following sections suggest key data elements, exception conditions, reports, and sample analysis which may be helpful in network capacity management: