In a poll of IT professionals at the TeamQuest Technology Summit, 85 percent said they were either reactive or more inclined to be reactive in their IT environment.

Maybe it’s the nature of the beast. IT is under demand to produce “more with less” and deliver always-on services. Marketing has a great idea and wants to run a campaign. Are we sitting at the table when marketing pitches a resource-taxing promotion on the company’s infrastructure? Do we allow ourselves enough time to test? Are we given enough time to plan for the campaign?

Some say you can’t sell prevention. But you can sell success. By proving that IT must be part of the strategic leadership on revenue-generating items, the company should have fewer hiccups, decreased headaches and more opportunities to capture revenue.

We’re all after the same thing – success for the company and happy customers. IT, by being ready (i.e., proactive), can help improve a company’s chances by using proper processes to improve revenue-generating and customer-facing opportunities.

For those of you who have had success at being proactive, how do you do it? What needs to happen to move toward being more proactive? Is it better software, processes, or people? Is it a combination?

We want to hear from you.

Craig

Steve Henning briefed the TTS audience on the partnership between his company Integrien Corp and TeamQuest. Integrien offers advanced analytics as a solution to over-alerting by monitoring software. Typically, firms receive hundreds of alerts. One example he gave was of a company which received hundreds every hour. In such a climate, alerts eventually get completely ignored.

Integrien proved its value at one large customer by conducting an analysis of historical data and then laying out what its system would have advised concerning the IT emergency that had been experienced in that period. During that emergency, hundreds of alerts from its existing monitoring system had failed to zero in on the real issues. With Integrien, a handful of alerts highlighted the exact problems and would have warned IT up to three hours in advance of the actual crash.

Integrien has chosen to tightly integrate its software with TeamQuest in order to offer the best of capacity planning alongside intelligent and predictive alerts. Integrien is in the midst of rolling out its solution along with TeamQuest in a large financial institution.  Craig

At the TeamQuest Technology Summit, John Miecielica of Metavante gave an informative talk on how to combine performance management and capacity planning with monitoring. He explained how much easier it used to be to do performance testing when you only had one server attached to its own storage with a defined set of users. Nowadays with virtualization, it’s a lot tougher as multiple users and apps are sharing a common infrastructure.

He gave an interesting example of an application that was suddenly exhibiting performance issues, yet had no change in traffic patterns and was running the same workloads. The application and infrastructure staff insisted no changes had been made. Performance monitoring indicated a change in IO and how it was serviced, yet the SAN team said there had been no microcode changes, new apps or major changes in storage subsystem. The issue had been caused by another team that had loaded an application on a shared server.

They had been very happy with the success of their implementation and had no idea of the consequences.

Yet a heavily virtualized envirnment makes such events inevitable. It takes tools like TeamQuest to provide enough visibility to detect and prevent similar occurrences.

Craig

The afternoon sessions at TTS were very informative.  Rey Rios gave a great session on ITSO and ITIL.  He discussed the differences, and similarities, between ITIL V2, V3 and ITSO.  Then he explained how TeamQuest products supported the frameworks and best practices.

Mark Manness and Scott Johnson followed Rey.  They discussed the upcoming changes to the VMWare agent and TeamQuest Model as it relates to modeling VMWare platforms and guests.  It was very informative and all are awaiting the releases.

Leonid Grinshpan of Oracle discussed multi-tiered application sizing.  It was great presentation.  Not only did he give us insight into modeling Oracle, he discussed step-by-step processes on how to build prototyping models without and system data, how to validate them and apply what-if scenarios.  I thought he did a great job of showing us how we can prototype new applications before they are built.

TTS seems to get better every year and this year is no exception.

Until the next time…

Ron

Jacques Lehoullier, senior architect for product selcetion at ING Canada (soon to be known as Intact Financial Corporation) gave a breakout session on how to expand AIX capacity from a fixed physical base. He laid out the fact that rapid growth led to increased hardware costs, higher logistical costs and delays due to floor space, electrical and cooling issues. The data center had literally ran out of space.

The company investigated virtualization as a solution, but worried about the risks due to having many applications running on one physical server. It upgraded from two IBM P595 servers of 64 CPUs each to four P590+ with 16 CPUs each in a virtual environment consisting of four CPU pools.

IT at the company consulted with Gartner Group which recommended TeamQuest. This helped the company simplify reporting — from as much as a month to gather the performance and capacity data down to seconds — and enabled the company to decommission several old servers despite adding 100 more logical partitions.  

Craig.

I’m here for the 8^th annual TeamQuest Technology Summit (TTS).  Despite the economy there has been a good turnout with everyone in a good mood.  It’s hard to be otherwise here in Savannah, Georgia.  Blue skies and light sea breezes make for a wonderful, relaxed environment to discuss Capacity Management topics. 

The conference kicked off with a welcome by President and CEO Jerred Ruble. He brought people up to date on TeamQuest happenings since the last meeting. He also awarded the IT Service Optimization Award to Law School Admission Council (LSAC). 

Bruce Bachman, LSAC CIO, was here to accept the award.  It was well-deserved as LSAC made huge strides in improving services over the past several years. Congratulations to Bruce, Jerry Goldman, Technical Services leader, and all the people at LSAC who worked so hard to make their success a reality!!

Some LSAC highlights:

• Used ITIL/ITSO best practices to manage risks
• Beat Recovery Time Objective goal by 12 hours
• Beat Recovery Point Objective by 3.5 hours
• Project finished ahead of time and under budget

JP Garbani of Forrester had a great presentation.  He spoke on strategies to improve IT efficiency.  He covered some history as to how we got here from a Capacity Management perspective.  He then discussed how technology complexity has increased and covered how this complexity impacts the business.  He stressed the point that we can no longer afford to be reactive as too many staff productivity and customer revenue dollars are lost during outages.  He closed by saying we need to have predictive processes to minimize outages, reducing costs and improving customer service; something very important and timely in these trying economic times.  It was refreshing to hear him tout some of the very same ITSO principles we have been advocating over the years.

Well, I’m off to the next session. 

Until the next time…

Ron

We Capacity Planning managers expect and receive information from wide audiences within our organizations. These people have busy schedules just like us.  One best practice I have observed over the years is the use of common courtesy.  When someone, especially in the business area, gives me information that I need to complete a piece of work, I make it a point to thank them.  I let them know I appreciate them taking the time from their busy schedule to get this for me.   

What I have found over the years is that the next time I approach that individual with an information request; I get a much warmer and more cooperative response. Many times those people provide additional information that helps provide more accurate predictions of the future.   

A simple “Thank You!” helps strengthen business relationships and makes it easier to get the information we need to be successful; both personally and organizationally.

Try it.  I think you will be pleased with the results.

Until the next time…

Ron

We’ve identified 5 reasons why you should attend this year’s TeamQuest Technology Summit in Savannah, Georgia, April 28 – 29.

Your Data Center is Sprawling with Virtual Machines

Managing virtual machines can be a mess. The virtual machines need to meet service levels. You need to be able to handle upgrades and maintenance and you also need to accurately predict application performance running on virtual servers.Attend one of the sessions below for more on managing virtual machines.

• Planning and Monitoring of Desktop Virtualization on VMware ESX
• Modeling VMware Systems
• Enhanced VMware Data Collection

You’re concerned about the health of IT Operations

Even though Wall Street, the economy and business operations are sick, it doesn’t mean the sickness has to spread to IT operations. Processes such as IT Service Optimization (ITSO), initiatives to align IT with business goals, and service level management can help IT operations run efficiently in today’s economic environment. Find out how you can keep IT fit.Plan to attend one of these sessions: 

• TeamQuest Model: Your Systems Health Practitioner
• Diagnostic Calisthenics
• Stay Out of the IT ER Using Automated Alarming adn Preventative Processes

Cost of attending an event is a deal breaker

This year, more than ever, companies are tightening their belts. This action is similar to over-provisioning hardware. You still need to learn, network and bring back new ideas to help the company move forward. You still need to do your due diligence to discover if new hardware is needed. TTS sessions are free. The only costs to you are air and hotel. After TTS, we offer training courses are offered at $300 per day!

Valuable training offered after TTS

Got a systems management headache? Take two days of training classes for quick relief. Following TTS, April 30 and May 1, you can train with TeamQuest Performance Software – hands on. The offered classes include:

• Administrator Training
• Introduction to TeamQuest Model
• Analyst Training
• TeamQuest Model Training

Registration for classes is part of the TTS registration process. Get training information here. Training courses are a low $300 investment in the health and management of your IT infrastructure. 

Need to increase productivity and cut costs

TTS sessions can show you how to boost response time and reduce down time by keeping your systems tuned and ready. Learn how to increase efficiency while at the same time dodging costly outages and slowdowns. Know which users or business entities are responsible for using IT resources, by accurately allocating IT resource consumption to the right people or organizations.

Register for TTS today before it’s too late!I hope to see you in Savannah, Georgia.

Craig

One of the frequently asked questions I receive is regarding queuing theory and how it applies to computing infrastructures. I think a good way to explain how computer systems have evolved to address queuing issues is through a burger joint analogy.When I was a kid, there were numerous “mom and pop” burger joints along the roads.  If you wanted a burger, you drove in, went up to the window, placed your order and paid your money.  The people inside cooked up what you requested while you stood there. 

At more popular burger joints, too many people had to wait because it was a one-in, one-out business model.  The busier ones came up with the idea that they would have an “order” window and a “pick-up” window.  This permitted multiple orders to be processed concurrently, reducing the line waiting to be served. The problem was that the order went in quickly, but during busy periods, people queued up at the “pick-up” window instead of the “order” window.

Then large chains used analysis tools (some computer-based) to determine the distribution of orders based on time-of-day and day-of-week.  Based on their analyses, management adjusted manpower schedules and scheduled making up orders in advance. Heat lamps kept the food hot. At peak times, the burger joints could quickly satisfy demand, keeping order and pick-up queues low. Even if there was wasted food, it was acceptable because they were providing faster service and attracting a greater number of customers. The additional volume and associated profits more than offset the rare losses.

Computer technology addressing queuing issues has matured in similar fashion. Old computers using the DOS operating system could only process one job at a time. Then Multiple Virtual operating systems came about. Multiple jobs could be run, however they would vie for the same resources, causing queuing (thus elongated wait times). 

With the advent of cheap memory in data storage (disk) controllers, you could fix data in storage at different points in time so that it was readily available and sped the execution of jobs.  Read-ahead technology was developed at the same time, further reducing job execution times. Current technologies use a wide variety of the above solutions to speed execution of jobs and transactions.  So as you can see, burger joints and computer queuing have a lot in common!

Until the next time

Ron

Just about everyone has access to a dictionary these days. Just because you bought one and put it on your shelf doesn’t mean you have to read every definition and use every word in the book. That’s time consuming and provides limited value. My apologies if you’re a lexicographer.

I’ve read the ITIL tomes – versions 1 through 3 – and while they provide value, I don’t believe that every person in the organization should read them from cover to cover. Just like a dictionary, you should use what’s best for your situation.

ITSO and ITIL are comprehensive sets of processes and best practices. Since every IT shop is different, they have different needs. Since IT professionals have their strengths and weaknesses, the best action is to winnow through the best practices and select the disciplines that fit your circumstances, and provide measureable and meaningful value.

If one of your organization’s shortcomings is in the Capacity Management or IT Service Management arena, I urge you to take a look at TeamQuest IT Service Optimization (ITSO). Just like a dictionary, there may be components of the framework that can provide immediate value.

In these tough business times, every little step you take to improve service quality and reduce costs is important to your organization’s survival. Find out more – ITSO. 

Remember, ITSO and ITIL are frameworks. They are collections of processes and best practices. It’s up to you to determine which components provide value to your organization and then implement them; fill in the blanks in the framework.

By the way, I found some words in my dictionary that best describe this process - “flexibility” and “customization.”

I’m putting my dictionary back on the shelf for now.

Until the next time…

Best Regards,

Ron