ITIL Capacity Management

ITIL Capacity Management: Is it really ‘Best Practice’?
UKCMG Annual Conference 2005: Session 2C2
ITIL Capacity Management:

Is it really ‘Best Practice’
or is there room for improvement?
Andy Bolton
Capacitas Ltd.
Agenda
• Defining ‘Best Practice’
• ITIL Overview & ITIL Capacity Management
• ITIL Capacity Management sub-processes
• ITIL Capacity Management activities
• ITIL Capacity Management process interfaces
• How does it fit together?
• What is good, what is missing and what could be done better?
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
2
© Capacitas 2002-2005
‘Best Practice’: A definition

To assess whether ITIL Capacity Management is really ‘best practice’ we need a working
definition.
For this presentation we will adopt the following as a general definition of ‘best practice’,
based on the relevant Wikipedia entry:
‘Best Practice’ determines the most broadly effective and efficient means for organising
a system or performing a function.
Note: The downside to this, or any, definition of ‘best practice’ assumes there is only one
way to organise a system or perform a function that is broadly effective and efficient, in all
circumstances.
3
Application Lifecycle & Capacity Management
‘Concept’ ‘Development’ ‘Live’ ‘Phase-out’

Feasibility Require Design Coding Testing Roll-out Live Changes End-of-life
• Need to • Review if • Review • Provide • Review • Provide • Business-as- • Assess all • Plan for de-
produce an require- design for design perform- capacity usual capacity software commissioning
approximate ments are perform- guidance ance assurance management – release requirements
cost of system achievable ance to avoid testing assessment ensuring changes to including any
to meet within problems, perform- results for that systems can the transient
specified budget costs and ance anti- any transient meet demands application capacity
performance scalability patterns problems capacity upon them to ensure required for
require- based on they will migration to
ments can current and not affect new platform
be met future work system
Software Application Lifecycle
4
A Brief ITIL Overview

“ITIL is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT
Service Management†. Used by many hundreds of organisations around the world, a whole
ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books and
the supporting professional qualification scheme.
ITIL consists of a series of books giving guidance on the provision of quality IT services,
and on the accommodation and environmental facilities needed to support IT. ITIL has
been developed in recognition of organisations' growing dependency on IT and embodies
best practices for IT Service Management.”
Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Website
†This suggests that neither COBIT or MOF are consistent and comprehensive.
5
What comprises ‘ITIL Capacity Management’?

ITIL 1: Original CCTA publication of ITIL Capacity Management in 1991 (Brian Johnson)
consisted of a 92 page book. The original publication set is now known colloquially as ‘ITIL
1’.
ITIL 2: Around 2000 the OGC (a successor of CCTA) released a new set of ITIL books
(known as ‘ITIL 2’) with the ten service management processes divided into ‘Service
Support’ and ‘Service Delivery’. Capacity Management is one of the five subjects within the
300 page Service Delivery book, but itself only consists of 39 pages plus 5 pages containing
appendixes.
ITIL 3: Currently in progress involving the OGC, itSMF and other industry bodies.
Please note that this presentation is based only on ITIL 2, the current OGC release, and will
only focus on the Capacity Management process.
6
What is ‘ITIL Capacity Management’?

Broken down into three separate tiered sub-processes:
• Business Capacity Management (IT Capacity Management assisting business
decision-making)
• Service Capacity Management (focus on the end-to-end capacity requirements of
each service)
• Resource Capacity Management (focus on individual system’s capacity requirements)
This provides a sensible method for partitioning different activities by their primary goals,
customers and deliverables.
Contains the following discrete components, most of which are termed as activities:
• Iterative activities
• Storage of Capacity Management data
• Demand Management
• Modelling
• Application Sizing
• Production of the Capacity Plan
7
ITIL Capacity Management Overview
Business Capacity
Management (BCM)
Service Capacity
Management (BCM) Iterative
Activities
Demand Storage of
Management Capacity
Resource Capacity Modelling Management
Management (BCM) Application Data
Sizing
Production of the
CDB
Capacity Plan
Covering all aspects of

Figure – Crown Copyright 2001
BCM, SCM and RCM
8
Business Capacity Management

“A prime objective of the Business Capacity Management sub-process is to ensure that
the future business requirements for IT Services are considered and understood, and that
sufficient Capacity to support the services is planned and implemented in an appropriate
timescale”
This is the most confused and least well-described of the tiers of capacity management;
sadly a great opportunity missed!
ITIL appears to be at a loss, or at least confused, as to what Business Capacity

Management (BCM) is. It appears to replicate details about Service Level Requirements
(SLRs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are already within Service Capacity
Management (SCM). I believe these service-focussed activities should remain wholly within
SCM. Business Capacity Management should be about planning at the business level, driven
by business volumetrics, rather than at any service or resource level. This will be covered
later on in this presentation.
9
Business Capacity Management
Agree Budget
Design procure
Identify and Negotiation and
amend Sign SLA
agree SLRs verify SLA
configuration
Resolve Capacity
Update CMDB /
related Incidents
CBD
& Problems
Implement under Operational

New
Change system complies
requirements
Management with SLA
10
Service Capacity Management

“A prime objective of the Service Capacity Management sub-process is to identify and
understand the IT Services, their use of resource, working patterns, peaks and troughs,
and to ensure that the services can and do meet their SLA targets, i.e. to ensure that the
IT Services perform as required. In this sub-process, the focus is on managing service
performance, as determined by the targets contained in the SLAs or SLRs”
Service Capacity Management (SCM) is focussed on the IT services provided and used,
irrespective of what underlying platforms they use, and so is interested in only performance
and capacity aspects of each service. However ITIL suggests that SCM only comes into play
“once the service becomes operational”; this is because of its confusion over what Business
Capacity Management should really be about, placing the pre-live aspects of Service
Capacity Management in that sub-process instead; I believe this is wrong. Service Capacity
Management should cover all aspects of the ‘IT Service’ throughout its lifecycle, including
pre-live.
11
Resource Capacity Management

“A prime objective of Resource Capacity Management is to identify and understand the
Capacity and utilisation of each of the component parts in the IT Infrastructure. This
ensures the optimum use of the current hardware and software resources In order to
achieve and maintain the agreed service levels. All hardware components and many
software components have a finite capacity, which, when exceeded, has the potential to
cause performance problems.”
Resource Capacity Management is focussed on reviewing individual components of the IT

infrastructure, usually at a platform-level, such as Solaris, Windows, Z/OS, etc. It concerns
resources such as processors, memory, disk and network and so recognises the need to
collect resource utilisation information on a regular (‘iterative’) basis. It recommends that
“monitors should be installed on the individual hardware and software components …
configured to collect the necessary data”. As this is has traditionally been the most
common form of Capacity Management it is surprising to find it covered in four paragraphs.
On the positive side RCM does then go on to also cover:
• the necessity for capacity managers to understand and recommend the benefits of
new technology
• the necessity for capacity managers to cover resilience as part of their responsibility
12
Iterative Activities
ITIL groups many of the business-as-usual activities together as they “need to be carried
out iteratively and form a natural cycle”; it calls these the “iterative activities” as shown in
the diagram on the following page.
The Monitoring activity focuses on monitoring the utilisation of resources and services;
typical data includes CPU utilisation, transactions per second, transaction response time
and queue lengths.
The Analysis activity should “identify trends from which the normal utilisation and service
level, or baseline, can be established”.
The Tuning activity is where areas of the configuration identified in the Analysis activity
“could be tuned to better utilise the system resource or improve the performance of a
particular service”.
The Implementation activity is the introduction to the live operation services any
Changes that have been identified by the monitoring, analysis and tuning activities.
13
ITIL Capacity Management:– ‘iterative activities’
Tuning
Implementation Analysis
Monitoring
Resource
SLM
Resource utilisation
SLM exception
utilisation exception
thresholds Capacity reports
thresholds reports
Management
Database
(CDB)
14
Capacity Management Database (CDB)

“The Capacity Management Database (CDB) is the cornerstone of a successful
Capacity Management process. Data in the CDB is stored and used by all the sub-processes
of Capacity Management because it is a repository that that [sic] holds a number of
different types of data viz. business, service, technical, financial and utilisation data.
However the CDB is unlikely to be a single database and probably exists in several physical
locations.”
The CDB is the central repository for all capacity management reporting and as such should
contain (for all platforms, services and businesses):
• Business data
• Service data
• Technical data
• Financial data
• Utilisation data
15

ITIL Capacity Management specifies the following as inputs of the CDB:
• For Business Data this includes:
• Number of accounts and products supported
• Seasonal variations of anticipated workloads
• For Service Data this includes:
• Response times
• SLM thresholds
• For Technical Data this includes:
• Resource utilisation limitations, e.g. 40% utilisation for a shared Ethernet
segment
• For Financial Data this includes:
• Financial plans
• IT budgets
• For Utilisation Data this includes:
• CPU utilisation for servers
• Number of transactions and response times for applications
16

ITIL Capacity Management specifies the following as outputs of the CDB:
• Service and Component Based Reports:
“reports must be produced to illustrate how the service and its constituent
components are performing and how much of its maximum Capacity is being
used.”
• Exception Reporting:
“Reports that show … when the Capacity and performance of a particular
component or service becomes unacceptable are also a required output …”
• Capacity Forecasts:
“… the Capacity Management process must predict future growth. To do this,
future component and service Capacity must be forecast. A simple example of
a Capacity forecast is a correlation between a business driver and a
component utilisation, e.g. CPU utilisation against the number of accounts
supported by the company.”
17
Demand Management
“The prime objective of Demand Management is to influence the demand for computing
resource and the use of that resource.”
This is initially a really strong inclusion in ITIL Capacity Management, as too many capacity
professionals only concentrate on controlling supply, forgetting that demand is the other
side of the equation.
ITIL does recognise the difficulty in operating Demand Management as it could cause
“damage to the business Customers or to the reputation of the IT organisation”, but does
not seem to acknowledge the necessity for workload characterisation to undertake it
accurately. It covers this important topic in only seven paragraphs, covering less than one
page!
18
Modelling
“ A prime objective of Capacity Management is to predict the behaviour of IT Services
under a given volume and variety of work. Modelling is an activity that can be used to
beneficial effect in any of the sub-processes of Capacity Management.”
Modelling, according to ITIL Capacity Management, only offers the following options:
• Trend Analysis
• Analytical Modelling
• Simulation Modelling
• Baseline Models
However, ITIL barely distinguishes where each of these techniques should be used; it
appears to simply offer them as a ‘toolkit’ of available modelling methods. Although
recognised as an underlying support activity to the overall process it is documented in only
ten paragraphs.
ITIL explains modelling quite poorly, appearing to think a baseline model is a type of model
in its own right, while including Trend Analysis, which is really a forecasting technique.
19
Application Sizing
“The primary objective of Application Sizing is to estimate the resource requirements to
support a proposed application Change or new application, to ensure it meets its required
service levels. To achieve this application sizing has to be an integral part of the application
lifecycle.”
Importantly ITIL recognises that “it is much easier and less expensive to achieve the
required service levels if the application design considers the required service levels at the
very beginning of the application lifecycle, rather than at some later stage”; however it
does not explicitly state the role Capacity Management has in performance assurance or
vice versa.
This is probably the most important recommendation in ITIL Capacity Management, so

could do with being more strongly emphasised rather than being a mere seven short
paragraphs. Unfortunately this recognition of the importance of Capacity Management
within the development lifecycle is not a mandatory requirement; also it doesn’t translate
well into BS15000, the closely related British Standard, which only states the capacity
management process “should provide support to the development of new and changed
services”.
20
Capacity Plan
“The prime objective is to produce a plan that documents the current levels of resource
utilisation and service performance, and after consideration of the business strategy and
plans, forecasts the future requirements for resources to support the IT Services that
underpin the business activities. The plan should clearly indicate clearly any assumptions
made. It should also include any recommendations quantified in terms of resource
required, cost, benefits, impact etc.”
ITIL refers to this as Production of the Capacity Plan. The Capacity Plan is the
fundamental output that any capacity management function must deliver, yet ITIL accords
it only four sentences in addition to the above objective paragraph (plus a template
Capacity Plan in an annex).
ITIL recommends capacity plans “be published annually, in line with the business or budget
lifecycles”, and updated quarterly thereafter. This recommendation does not recognise that
a Capacity Plan should really be produced in line with the rate of change on the platform or
service under scrutiny. For example a government department may be only require an
annual capacity plan but an Internet-based merchant could benefit from monthly capacity
plans. ITIL does however mention that this may be required “in extreme cases”.
21
Activity Frequency
ITIL describes when various activities should be undertaken as:
On-going:
• Iterative activities
• Demand Management
• Storage of Capacity Management Data
Ad-hoc:
• Modelling
• Application Sizing
Regularly:
• Production of the Capacity Plan
It also states that “any one of the sub-processes of Capacity Management may carry out
any of the activities, with the data that is generated being stored in the CDB”.
22
Process Interfaces
Service Support Service Delivery
Ensuring that performance and

Incident Information and resolutions on Service Level
Capacity targets can be
Management Capacity-related Incidents
achieved in SLAs Management
Capacity Management
Provide assistance and Close alignment as capacity
Problem Availability
resolutions on Capacity-related issues result in service
Management Problems unavailability Management
Determination of Capacity IT Service

Change Assess Changes for Capacity
requirements for all recovery Continuity
Management impact
options Management
Configuration Provision of Configuration Item Provision of cost summaries Financial

Management information and Charging mechanisms Management
Release Assistance with developing the Calculation of required capacity Application

Management distribution strategy via Application Sizing activity Management
23
How does it all fit together?

• Need to • Review if • Review • Provide • Review • Provide Demand

• Business-as- • Assess all • Plan for de-
produce an require- design for design perform- capacity Management
usual capacity software commissioning
approximate ments are perform- guidance ance assurance management – release requirements
cost of system achievable ance to avoid Modellingassessment
testing ensuring changes to including any
to meet
specified
within
budget
problems,
costs and
perform-
ance anti-
results for
any
that
transient
Capacity Plan
systems can
meet demands
the
application
transient
capacity
performance scalability patterns problems capacity Iterative
upon them Application
to ensure required for
Application Sizing require-
ments can
based on
Activities
current and
they will
Sizing
not affect
migration to
new platform
be met Performance
future work system
Monitoring
Business-
focussed
activities
Tools
Capacity
Supporting Database
activity
24
What is good in ITIL Capacity Management?

• Coverage of Response Time Monitoring
• ITIL Framework for Service Management
• ITIL Capacity Management – although basic it has a good breadth
• Recognition of potentially high cost of Capacity Management, especially tools
• Recognition of potentially valuable benefits of Capacity Management, including:
• Increased effectiveness and cost savings
• Reduced risk
• More confidence in forecasts
• Value to application lifecycle
• Interfaces to other Service Management processes
• Capacity Plan template
• Close relationship between Capacity Management and Availability Management
• Capacity Management Database overview
• Activity frequency timetable
• Planning, implementation and review of the Capacity Management process
25

• Recognises shortcoming of ‘pay for upgrades as required’ approach to capacity
management
• Recognises the complexity of distributed capacity management compared to the ‘good
old days’ of the mainframe
• Recognises the dependence of other service management processes on an effective
capacity management process
• “Good Capacity Management ensures NO SURPRISES”
• Recognition that capacity management is about meeting current and future business
requirements cost-effectively
• Capacity Management process’s goal is ‘to ensure that cost justifiable IT Capacity always
exists and that it is matched it the current and future identified needs of the business’
• Scope of the Capacity Management process – it should be the focal point for all IT
performance and capacity issues
• Capacity Management has a close, two-way relationship with the business strategy and
planning process
26

• Recognition that the Capacity Management process requires accurate information on the
business and IT strategy and plans to function effectively
• Capacity Management needs to assess all changes for their impact on capacity of the
infrastructure
• Recognition that Capacity Management process activities are categorised into proactive
and reactive activities
• “The more successful the proactive activities of Capacity Management, the less need
there will be for the reactive activities of Capacity Management”
• “Capacity Management should not be a last minute ‘tick in the box’ just prior to
Operations Acceptance and Customer Acceptance”
• Recognition that SLAs should be verified by Capacity Management process using
modelling
• Recognition that Capacity Management should identify new technology opportunities
• Capacity Management is a key enabler for business success
• Concept of a stratified approach encompassing Business, Service and Resources Capacity
Management
27
What is missing from ITIL Capacity Management?

1. A recognition of the need for performance assurance / performance engineering within
Capacity Management:
• Application Sizing and Modelling appear to be simply used to reactively size target
platforms rather than assist with optimising the application design during the
development lifecycle
• Without some level of performance assurance / performance engineering SLRs may
not be met on any size platform
• Performance risk analysis at Change stage involving Capacity Management
2. Application co-existence modelling (within Modelling)
3. Workload characterisation, profiling, modelling & management
4. Demand Forecasting provided in business units (# accounts, etc.)
5. Organisational structures for large organisations
6. Explicit requirement for marketing forecasts to be passed to Capacity Management
28
What is missing from ITIL Capacity Management?

• Need to • Review if • Review • Provide • Review • Provide Demand

• Business-as- • Assess all • Plan for de-
produce an require- design for design perform- capacity Management
usual capacity software commissioning
approximate ments are perform- guidance Workload
ance Characterisation
assurance management – release requirements
cost of system achievable ance to avoid Modellingassessment
testing ensuring changes to including any
to meet
specified
within
budget
problems,
Performance
costs and
perform-
Assurance
ance anti-
results for
any
that
transient
Capacity Plan
systems can
meet demands
the
application
transient
capacity
performance scalability patterns problems capacity Iterative
upon them Application
to ensure required for
Application Sizing require-
ments can
based on
Activities
current and
they will
Sizing
not affect
migration to
new platform
be met Performance
future work system
Demand ForecastingMonitoring
ITIL
activities
Capacity
Missing Database
activities
29
What could be done better?

Firstly, Business Capacity Management: If you consider this is to be aligned and
interfacing with the Business Management tier then this is a major lost opportunity. The
business converses in metrics which are not easily useful or even identifiable to the IT user.
An example in a financial services company would be:
• Business Manager: Talks in number of customer accounts, funds under management, etc.
• Service Manager: Talks in number of IT services, SLAs, response times, etc.
• Resource Manager: Talks in number of servers, OS, hardware specification &
configuration, etc.
These are not the same language and the translation between them is often non-trivial. A
Business Manager will be using the units or metrics that he understands, cares about and
relates to his bonus! So, for example, he could be interested in the number of customer
accounts that the company has and expects to obtain in the future. Customer accounts
may be useful for some simple capacity metrics but generally does not map 1:1 for any
resource or service. More detail along these lines would be extremely useful.
30
What could be done better?

Other areas that could do with improvement in ITIL Capacity Management:
• Application Sizing and Modelling activities sections should be re-written to explain
these complex subjects more effectively
• While there is a recognition of the Time-to-Market pressures on Capacity
Management process, ITIL provides no advice or recommendations to help
• The relationships between each of the activities needs more detailed explanation
• Increased complexity of Distributed Capacity Management mentioned briefly but not
elaborated on
• Covers many important details of the activities and sub-processes only in the
Implementation section
• Need to recognise that Capacity Management recommendations will often be
ignored until too late (a lack of pragmatism)
• Recognition of the IT organisation’s reliance on Capacity Management to produce a
consolidated budget forecast
• The dependence on Capacity Management to provide transient capacity in Service
Continuity situation is not well explained
31
Conclusions
Q. Is ITIL Capacity Management really ‘best practice’ as under our working definition?
A. No. It is, on balance, a very good starting point, but lacks a consistent and coherent
philosophy that should be evident within a ‘best practice’ document. It could arguably
be called good practice though
Q. Why do I think it isn’t ‘best practice’?

A. In summary, for the following reasons:
• It defines a broad set of activities that should be undertaken by everyone to achieve
appropriate Capacity Management, not recognising differing circumstances across
organisations.
• It poorly describes key activities such as Modelling, Application Sizing and Production
of the Capacity Plan
• It poorly describes the key sub-process of Business Capacity Management
• It is missing key activities including Performance Assurance, Workload Characterisation
and Demand Forecasting
32
Any Questions?
Andy Bolton
Capacitas Ltd.
33
Bibliography
IT Infrastructure Library:
• Service Delivery, TSO Books, 2001
• Application Management, TSO Books, 2002
[Please note that ITIL® and IT Infrastructure Library® are Registered Trade Marks of OGC.]
British Standards:
• BS 15000-1:2002, IT service management, Part 1: Specification for service
management
• BS 15000-2:2003, IT service management, Part 2: Code of practice for service
management
Other Service Management & IT Governance Frameworks:

• Microsoft Operations Framework, Microsoft Corporation, www.microsoft.com
• COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology), IT Governance
Institute (ITGI), www.itgi.org
34

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ITIL Capacity Management: Is it really ‘Best Practice’?

UKCMG Annual Conference 2005: Session 2C2

ITIL Capacity Management:

‘Best Practice’: A definition

Application Lifecycle & Capacity Management

‘Concept’ ‘Development’ ‘Live’ ‘Phase-out’

Software Application Lifecycle

A Brief ITIL Overview

Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Website

What comprises ‘ITIL Capacity Management’?

What is ‘ITIL Capacity Management’?

ITIL Capacity Management Overview

Covering all aspects of

Business Capacity Management

ITIL appears to be at a loss, or at least confused, as to what Business Capacity

Business Capacity Management

Implement under Operational

Service Capacity Management

Resource Capacity Management

Resource Capacity Management is focussed on reviewing individual components of the IT

ITIL Capacity Management:– ‘iterative activities’

Capacity Management Database (CDB)

Capacity Management Database (CDB)

Capacity Management Database (CDB)

This is probably the most important recommendation in ITIL Capacity Management, so

Ensuring that performance and

Determination of Capacity IT Service

Configuration Provision of Configuration Item Provision of cost summaries Financial

Release Assistance with developing the Calculation of required capacity Application

How does it all fit together?

‘Concept’ ‘Development’ ‘Live’ ‘Phase-out’

• Need to • Review if • Review • Provide • Review • Provide Demand

What is good in ITIL Capacity Management?

What is good in ITIL Capacity Management?

What is good in ITIL Capacity Management?

What is missing from ITIL Capacity Management?

What is missing from ITIL Capacity Management?

‘Concept’ ‘Development’ ‘Live’ ‘Phase-out’

• Need to • Review if • Review • Provide • Review • Provide Demand

What could be done better?

What could be done better?

Q. Why do I think it isn’t ‘best practice’?

Other Service Management & IT Governance Frameworks:

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