Harness Capacity Planning
in Transaction-Intensive Environments

Capacity planning is challenging at the best of times. But in transaction-intensive environments, capacity planning is pushed to the limits. This paper covers the effectiveness of TeamQuest software in high availability and heavy traffic areas.

Coping with High Volume Transaction Processing
Some companies have to cope with millions of transactions a year. But when you move in to the big leagues among major financial and banking giants, the volume of transactions can move into the tens of millions per year. And the quantity of cash involved can be measured in the trillions of dollars.

To complicate matters, the amount of transactions can fluctuate markedly in very short periods. All it takes is a change in consumer behavior or a sudden shift in the business world to bring about a peak or valley. Capacity planning, however, helps in achieving an understanding of the nature of the flow of transactions through systems.

Planning based on limited time periods will be inaccurate, resulting in over capacity for other parts of the year. In addition, peak seasons have to be taken into account. The transition from off-peak to peak periods typically occurs rapidly so modeling has to be done well in advance and validated so appropriate steps can be taken before a jump to peak season occurs.

Such an environment poses significant challenges for the capacity planner. And when it occurs in the financial sector, it typically takes place in tandem with tremendous changes on the application, organizational and process fronts. Capacity planning in a transaction-intensive sphere has to cope with a lack of similar volumes through the year to use as baselines. If it is in the financial sector, 24 by 7 by 365 availability is required. Software constraints can come into play as multiple software applications are often running.

TeamQuest in Action
The TeamQuest Performance Software suite includes various elements that are particularly useful in high-volume transaction environments. TeamQuest View, for example, can be used extensively to provide a real-time view of performance data. It enables trends to be tracked over the long term, does not require specific knowledge of the operating system and allows multiple servers to be viewed on a single page.

TeamQuest Model is a capacity planning package that accurately predicts the resources required to support consistent service delivery at appropriate risk levels. TeamQuest Model is used to predict the resources required to meet service levels as demand increases, identify which components will negatively impact response time and find the least expensive way to accommodate workload increases. As a member of the overall TeamQuest suite, TeamQuest Model can create baseline models using data collected by TeamQuest Performance Software. TeamQuest Model can also create baseline models using data collected by HP OpenView Performance Agents or HP OpenView Reporter. Multiple 'what-if' scenarios can be constructed from a single baseline. Such modeling also allows you to simulate changes in the whole system, rather than just modeling the results of a CPU upgrade. Further, each month can be manually defined, so simulations are accurate.

TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer is a rich web application which is used to proactively detect, investigate and diagnose IT service performance issues, even in transaction-intensive environments. TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer is used to: analyze and report IT service performance; drill down from IT services to the infrastructure components that support them to investigate and diagnose service performance issues; and identify the root cause of performance issues, regardless of where the infrastructure component may reside. Analyzer also provides the ability to graph user tables, and allows reports to be published into TeamQuest IT Service Reporter.

TeamQuest IT Service Reporter is another rich web application used to create, customize and distribute reports via the web or in PDF or Excel spreadsheet formats. TeamQuest IT Service Reporter is used to create dashboard-style reports customized for your intended audience, customize reports with your logo and explanatory text using a drag-and-drop interface, and provide a performance management report revealing the status of IT services. Such features are particularly important when you are dealing with a high volume of transactions and highly variable traffic patterns.

Capacity Planning Tips
Once conducted, capacity plans should be repeated annually to take into account growth rates and changes in the environment. Further, in an organization that has to deal with massive transaction volumes, interim capacity plans should be done every three months. Ad-hoc reports should also be carried out to verify all is well and to investigate unusual occurrences or to follow up on unusual patterns.

Armed with TeamQuest Performance Software, capacity planning makes it possible to cope with whatever transaction volumes are being experienced. Modeling, in particular, is essential in such environments. Only by utilizing TeamQuest to precisely model traffic levels and traffic variability can the capacity planner ensure the organization stays on top of growth expectations and prevent bottlenecks.