Capacity Planning

During Service Design and Service Transition, the capacity requirements of IT services are calculated. A forward-looking capacity plan should be maintained and regularly updated and Service Operation will have a role to play in this. Such a plan should look forward up to two years or more, but should be reviewed regularly every three to 12 months, depending upon volatility and resources available.

The plan should be linked to the organization’s financial planning cycle, so that any required expenditure for infrastructure upgrades, enhancements or additions can be included in budget estimates and approved in advance.

The plan should predict the future but must also examine and report upon previous predictions, particularly to give some confidence in further predictions. Where any discrepancies have been encountered, these should be explained and future remedial action described.

The Capacity Plan might typically cover:

• Current performance and utilization details, with recent trends for all key CIs, including
• Backbone networks
• LANs
• Mainframes (if still used)
• Key servers
• Main data storage devices
• Selected (representative) desktop and laptop equipment
• Key websites
• Key databases
• Key applications
• Operational capacity – electricity, floor space, environmental capacity (air condition), floor weighting, heat generation and output, electrical and water demand and supply etc.
• Magnetic media.
• Estimated performance and utilization for all such CIs during the planning period (e.g. the next three months)
• Comparative data with previous estimates – to allow confidence in future estimates to be judged
• Reports on any specific capacity difficulties encountered in the past period, with details of recovery and preventive actions taken for the future
• Details of any required upgrades or procurements needed and planned for the future, with indicative costs and timescales.
• Any potential capacity risks that are likely – with suggested countermeasures should they arise.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 894