TeamQuest Technology Summit 2011 is off and running with an introduction by our very own Vernon Johnson (follow him on Twitter at @vjthree). The events this week promise to be packed full of discussions around virtualization, cloud computing, and just how capacity management can guarantee a successful implementation of a variety of emerging technologies.

TeamQuest CEO, Jerred Ruble, takes the podium to let the audience know that 2011 is a also the 20th anniversary of TeamQuest Corporation’s existence. We are proud to say that our company has been profitable for all of these 20 years and we have no one more to thank more than our customers!

Mr. Ruble also announced that Verizon Wireless has been named the recipient of the TeamQuest IT Service Optimization (ITSO) Award for TeamQuest customers adopting ITSO best practices and leveraging TeamQuest Performance Software in their operations.

In looking to the future, TeamQuest is focusing on virtualized and cloud environments, scalable and extensible Capacity Managment Information System (CMIS), and more automated capacity management.

In just one short week, TTS 2011 will be kicking off in sunny Tucson, AZ. We wish everyone could could attend in person, but we understand schedules don’t always allow for that. We will be live tweeting and blogging throughout the event for your viewing pleasure. So make sure to check back here or subscribe to our ITSO Blog RSS feed. Also, tweets will be flowing from a variety of sources including @TeamQuest_Corp. Be sure to follow the hashtag #TTS2011!

We hope you find the information presented at TTS 2011 to be informative. As always, let us know by leaving a comment here or contacting us on Twitter.

This entry is one in a series of Top 10 lessons learned by Ron Potter in his previous job as the Director of Capacity Planning at a Fortune 100 health insurance provider.

Relationships Matter

Whether you realize it or not, building relationships are key to your success. People work together better when it isn’t just another faceless person behind that email or speakerphone. I have made it a point to meet many of my business and IT co-workers. I have participated in company events such as golf tournaments, baseball game outings and fund-raising activities. Participation in activities such as those helps build better working relationships and makes our jobs easier.

Now many of you might perceive this as playing politics and find that distasteful. Politics is not the goal here. In many cases, communication breakdowns occur because we do not know or understand the person originating the request or information and misinterpret it. As a result we go down the wrong road and it usually isn’t caught until late in the service delivery process. When we know each other better, we work together better. Communications disconnects are rare because we know the parties involved and more clearly understand their positions and needs.  Whether you realize it or not, we treat people we know differently. That personal familiarity makes a difference because IT is complex and requires teamwork to be successful. Relationships create those bonds and are needed to more efficiently and accurately complete our day-to-day work.

Until the next post!

Ron

How’s your Tetris game? Looks like that maddening game is a good analogy for dealing with demanding workloads - much like what you should expect when managing today’s virtualized environments.

Estimation, analytical modeling and synthetic load testing are the three best ways to predict workload capacity requirements. Up front planning can help you efficiently manage those workloads.

Of the three options mentioned above, you should have a good understanding of what will work best in your environment (virtual and physical, homogeneous and heterogeneous, simple and complex). Remember, managing your environment is part of your journey to simplifying your work.

Read an excerpt from the white paper below and check it out for yourself.

Tetris-like blocks symbolize the irregularities among different workloads. A simple workload with a moderate need for resources would be represented by a basic two-piece block. Higher needs for resources and higher complexity would cause the block to expand in various directions.

The larger and less symmetric the blocks get, the harder it is to combine them. An inability to combine the blocks translates into workloads that are starved for resources and can’t be migrated to another host. All of a sudden, two of the key mechanisms that enable flexibility in virtualized environments become unusable. And even if you were able to combine them, large asymmetric blocks will most likely lead to white space fragmentation and lower resources utilization than you calculated and planned for.

White paper

Is this something you’ve dealt with? Let me know which option worked best in your environment and why?

Enjoy the journey.

Vernon

In listening to eBay’s Mazen Rawashdeh and Gartner’s Dave Cappuccio in their Gartner Data Center Conference session discussing how eBay solved their infrastructure and data center challenges, a few things stood out to me:

• A linear relationship between capacity and cost is not a sustainable IT Operations model. If you cannot look at historical data, understand your current capacity status, and be able to plan for future capacity investments, you will have a tough time keeping your costs at a reasonable rate while providing adequate capacity to support all of the services you provide to the business.
• Metrics drive behavior. Think about it…accountability cannot happen without measurement.
• If you are unable to innovate and keep up with the changes around you, you will fail. This is not only good business but also a valuable life lesson.
• Start with the why, not the what. Help your teams understand WHY they are doing what they are doing.
• People, process, and tools are the foundation for driving change, efficiency, and ultimately generating revenue.

So, what’s your plan to break the linear correlation between capacity and cost?

Joe

Well, I finally heard the word that I’ve known to be true in pretty much every emerging data center technology that has come about in the past 20 years of TeamQuest’s existence. “Sprawl.” But now it’s turned from “virtual sprawl” to “cloud sprawl.” In sitting in one of the key notes yesterday, I heard Gartner’s Ray Paquet enunciate the words that make my skin crawl. Sprawl!

The only cure for technology sprawl are the fundamentals of our IT Service Optimization (or ITSO, hence the name of this blog) process. A combination of capacity management people, process, and tools is the cure. With the advent of recent technology like virtualization and cloud computing, people thought capacity would not be a problem. But, the fact remains that data center space along with power and cooling is still one of the top priorities of CIOs across the globe. Yet people thought capacity management was dead, right? Wrong.

If you’d like to keep up with the rest of the Gartner Data Center Conference, you can follow the #GartnerDC hashtag, follow me at @jwia on Twitter, or keep checking this blog for updates. Oh, and you can always join our LinkedIn Group.

All for now,

Joe

Speaking recently at a Gartner conference, Gartner analyst Milind Govekar said through 2015, less than 25% of enterprises will derive full benefits of virtualization and cloud computing.

Why? Because of the lack of understanding and investment in capacity planning.

He went on to say there is a perception that buying more compute resource capacity will solve performance and availability problems for every capacity-related incident. It doesn’t. And many think it’s cheaper to overprovision than to mess with planning. It isn’t.

Govekar said through 2015, 75% of organizations will plan compute resource elasticity by overprovisioning compute resources but will continue to face major outages.

Don’t let that be you. It is a journey to go from simply overprovisioning to proactive planning. And yes, there are likely to be some speedbumps along the way. But it’s worth it from so many angles. And you have a trusted companion to guide you.

Join the Journey!

Jennifer

While many of you in the US will be thinking and talking about turkey and stuffing next week, TeamQuest will be talking about Capacity Management Maturity. Our very own Per Bauer, TeamQuest EMEA Technical Account Manager, is presenting at the Gartner Data Center & IT Operations Summit in London.

As greater demands are placed on IT for efficiency and productivity, it is becoming more important for IT organizations to adopt more sophisticated methods; Capacity Management processes must become more “mature”. We will help you assess your current maturity level and also guide you to a way forward.

So if you are planning to attend, take time on Monday, November 22, at 15:00 to take in Per’s presentation.

Even if you aren’t attending, you can learn more about Capacity Management Maturity at any time.

And don’t forget to stop by booth #7. See you there!

This entry is one in a series of Top 10 lessons learned by Ron Potter in his previous job as the Director of Capacity Planning at a Fortune 100 health insurance provider.

How to find your capacity “tipping point”

No matter what you do, you will always have unforeseen events that will drive IT systems crazy. It will be that way until Murphy’s Law is finally repealed. Few organizations can afford to cover every eventuality. It just isn’t economically feasible. That’s where we come in. Our job is to balance cost, availability and performance.

I believe the best balance is attained through part art and part science. The science part looks at captured data to determine what has occurred in the past. That doesn’t mean that planning for those peaks will mitigate the risk, it just means it will mitigate today’s known risk. Tomorrow’s peak may be higher because Murphy seems to know when you add capacity.

Then the art part comes into play. That involves talking to the people who suffered during those peaks. It permits you to compare different events to determine to what level and severity parts of the organization were impacted. Those discussions help you determine the “tipping point” or point where the level of “pain” on the business becomes intolerable. Your first goal should be to build a capacity plan that satisfies volumes just below that point. Cost the results out. Too high? Reduce the solution until the costs are affordable. The amount of capacity shortfall between the “tipping point” and your solution is your risk. Now go back through historical data and see how many times systems have reached the risk level. Frequently? Maybe time to escalate to management. If you do, you have the data and user experiences to back your recommendations.

Until the next post…

Ron

Many of us who have been involved with Capacity Management for some time have experienced the situation of not being able to recreate past work. We built a plan and then six months later, have a need to measure progress against predictions. The only problem is that we can’t recreate the original results. I have spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong with my calculations, only to find out that I had changed my process to create the report, missed a parameter or two and used a different reporting tool against someone else’s data. After being embarrassed a time or two, I took steps to avoid those mistakes.

Well now you don’t have to worry about those reporting and data disconnects. There is an ITIL Version 3 concept, called a Capacity Management Information System or CMIS, which can make life easier for all of us by helping to prevent problems such as these. An upgrade to the previous ITIL Capacity Management Database (CDB), the CMIS not only stores a wide variety of infrastructure usage and performance data, it includes a set of reporting tools. The CMIS is the book of record for all Capacity Management usage and performance data so no questioning who collected what data and how. A common reporting tool means you don’t have to worry about different reporting algorithms or distribution methodologies which can skew results. Operating with a consistent set of reporting tools and synchronized data, you will get the same answer every time, even if it’s six months from now.

Want to know more? Read our new CMIS white paper or contact your friendly TeamQuest representative to find out how TeamQuest’s implementation of a CMIS can help you maintain consistency and uniformity in your reporting.

Until the next post,

Ron