2. USAGE CONSIDERATIONS › 2.3 Use Within the Information Structure › 2.3.4 Installation Environment Analysis › 2.3.4.2 Environment: Capacity Management

2.3.4.2 Environment: Capacity Management

 
Capacity management in the data communications environment
can be approached in two ways:
 
o  Workload Growth Analysis
o  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 CA 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:
 
   1 - Capacity Management Indicators
   2 - Capacity Management Exceptions
   3 - Capacity Management Reports
   4 - Capacity Analysis