Tools for ITIL Capacity Management: How not to spend 100,000

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Tools for ITIL Capacity Management: How not to

spend £100,000

Danny Quilton

Capacitas

[email protected]

South West and Wales Regional itSMF Group; December 12, 2008 Tools for ITIL Capacity Management: How not to spend £100,000

Abstract

Capacity Management requires data to produce meaningful deliverables

such as models and capacity plans. While there are a considerable

number of tools on the market for collecting data, manipulating it,

analysing it and reporting the results, most of these cost in excess of

£100,000 to purchase. Capacitas has a strong ethos of using whatever is

available, whether it is OS bundled products or inexpensive third-party

products. This presentation highlights some of the useful products

already available to the capacity manager without incurring significant

capital expenditure.

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Agenda

• Introduction

• Toolsets for capacity and performance monitoring

• Toolsets for capacity and performance modelling

• Analytical modelling

• Simulation modelling

• Summary

Introduction

• Capacity and performance monitoring underpins the entire

Capacity

Management

process suite:

• Capacity and performance baselining

• Capacity and performance reporting and exception alerting

• Workload characterisation

• Business and service demand tracking

• A capacity and performance model provides the foundation to

deliver

capacity planning

• Monitoring and modelling tools are thus critical to delivering both

capacity management and capacity planning

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Introduction

• Capacitas is vendor independent

• None of the tools described here are being actively promoted

• These are available tools that may fit your particular

requirements

Commercial Monitoring Tools Market

• The ‘big four’:

• IBM

• CA

• HP

• BMC Software

• All offer extensive systems and network management product suites of

which performance monitoring is one facet

• Large number of smaller players who typically offer a subset of the

functionality of the ‘big four’

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Commercial Monitoring Tools Market

• The ‘big four’ have significantly expanded their product suites through

acquisition

• Expect this to continue

• Movement towards:

• End-to-end performance monitoring

• Service monitoring

‘Big Four’ Toolsets

Strengths

Weaknesses

Established vendor

Lack of integration with acquired

products

Extensive product suite

High cost

Wide user base

Lack of functional flexibility

Strong support channels

Not necessarily the best in each and

every module offering

Can offer product modules across the

whole systems management

spectrum

Licensing models can be prohibitive,

especially those priced per node or per

performance metric

The origin and meaning of certain

metrics may be ambiguous

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Alternative Monitoring Toolsets

• Operating system toolsets

• Typically bundled or available as free add-ons

• Open source toolsets

• Low-cost toolsets

Operating System Tools

• Windows

• Solaris

• AIX

• Linux

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Windows Capacity and Performance Monitoring

OS

Tool

Functionality

Windows Server

2008

Performance

Monitor

Real time performance monitoring and

logging

Windows Server

2008

Reliability and

Performance

Real time performance monitoring

Windows Server

2003

Sysmon

Real time performance monitoring and

logging

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Sysmon/Performance Monitor

• Ability to log performance

data directly to a local or

remote SQL Server

database

• Little database

configuration required

• Data log settings may be saved to a HTML file

• Can then be used as a template for other target devices

Data Logging Templates

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Centrally Based Collection Strategy

Central

Repository

Monitored

Devices

Polled Data

Remote Based Collection Strategy

Central

Repository

Monitored

Devices

Batch Data

Transfer

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Windows Further Reading

• Performance and Capacity Monitoring Windows 2003 Using Out of the

Box Tools

• http://www.capacitas.co.uk/research/download.php?fn=w2003to

ols.pdf

• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Performance

• http://www.capacitas.co.uk/research/download.php?fn=Vista-Longhorn.pdf&ct=070905030656

Solaris/Linux Monitoring Toolsets

• Consists of the following suites of tools

• sar

• iostat

• mpstat

• vmstat

• netstat

• Relatively easy to automate monitoring

• Results can be collected, parsed and loaded into a central repository

• However development effort required

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AIX/Linux Monitoring Toolsets

• NMON

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/l

ibrary/au-analyze_aix/index.html#N10378

• http://www-941.haw.ibm.com/collaboration/wiki/displa

y/WikiPtype/nmon

Open Source Monitoring Toolsets

• Nagios

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Nagios

• Systems, services and network monitoring

• http://www.nagios.org/

• Originally designed to run on Linux but can run on most operating

systems

• Largest published deployment consists of:

• 20 servers performing monitoring

• 100,000 monitored hosts

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Nagios

• Cross-platform capacity and performance monitoring:

• Windows

• Unix variants

• Network devices

• Can also perform service and availability monitoring

• Remote monitoring can be achieved using agents

• MySQL database support

• Highly extensible

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SEtoolkit

• A package of utilities for monitoring

of the Solaris operating system

• Composed of a scripting language,

pre-written support code and

example programs

• Supports Solaris 8, 9 or 10

• Available for SPARC or x86

systems

• First developed in 1993, now

available under GPL

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/

setoolkit/

Low-Cost Toolsets

• Applications Manager from ManageEngine

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Applications Manager

• Cross platform

• AIX

• FreeBSD

• HP-UX / Tru64

• Linux

• Mac OS

• Sun Solaris

• Windows

• Resource monitoring

• Service availability

• Response time monitoring

Applications Manager

• Monitors numerous application servers including:

• Oracle AS

• Tomcat Server

• WebLogic Server

• WebSphere Server

• MS SQL

• MySQL

• Oracle

• Apache Server

• IIS Server

• Web Server

• Mail Servers

• Exchange Server

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Applications Manager

Strengths

Weaknesses

Low cost

Lack of flexibility around data retention

Ease of configuration

Lack of flexibility around data

summarisation

Cross platform

Does not provide monitoring at the

ITIL business layer

Multiple services

Limited threshold alerting capability

Licensed by number of monitors

Applications Manager List Price

Product

# of Monitors

List Price

Professional Edition

25 $570

50 $1,070

100 $2,140

150 $4,290

Enterprise Edition

250 $5,720

500 $7,860

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Modelling Tools

• Analytical modelling tools

• Simulation modelling tools

Commercial Modelling Tools

Strengths

Weaknesses

Extensive libraries of

pre-constructed models

High cost

Wide user base

Modelling algorithms employed are not

always documented thus the underlying

assumptions of models built using the tool

are not understood

Strong support channels

May be tightly coupled to performance

monitoring tools

Integration with performance

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Analytical Modelling Tools

• Excel

Modelling With Excel

• Powerful solutions can be rapidly built

• Success-based modelling approach

• Extensive research in the public domain:

• Capacitas

• http://www.capacitas.co.uk/research/downloads/

• Daniel Menasce

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Modelling With Excel

• Further reading:

• Cost Effective Capacity Modelling - A Real-life Case Study

• http://www.capacitas.co.uk/research/download.php?fn=cap_

mod_h.pdf&ct=070917031909

• Implementing an End-to-End Performance Model of an

E-Commerce System in Microsoft Excel

• http://www.capacitas.co.uk/research/download.php?fn=excel

model.pdf

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Modelling With Excel

Predicted KPI Compliance for Transaction: Drill into Quotes

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000

15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 45,000 50,000 55,000 60,000 65,000 70,000 75,000 Number of CRM users

m

s

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Modelling With Excel

Strengths

Weaknesses

Mature, stable product

Maintenance

Zero capital cost

Requires customisation specific to your

problem domain

Flexibility to model most problem

domains

Avoids engaging in long procurement

cycles for modelling tools

Models can be parameterised to

deliver scenario modelling

Simulation Modelling

• CSIM 19 from Mesquite Software

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CSIM 19

• http://www.mesquite.com/ind

ex.htm

• Low cost simulation modelling

tool

• Extensive client list

• Performance Engineering

Services use CSIM 19 as an

engine for their SPE-ED tool

CSIM 19

• CSIM 19 is a library of routines for use by C or C++ programmers;

• These routines are used to implement process-oriented,

discrete-event simulation models of complex systems

• A CSIM 19 model is a computer program, written in C or C++

• A model consists of:

• Structures (which simulate the resources of the model system)

• Processes (which simulate the active entities of the model

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CSIM 19 List Price

Product

# of Units

Unit Price

Professional Licence

1 $1,000

2 $850

3 $850

4 $725

5 $725

6+

$675

Run Time Option

1 – 10

$225

11 – 25

$200

26 – 50

$175

51+

$150

OMNeT++

• Free for non-commercial use

• http://www.omnetpp.org/

• Commercial licence available from

• http://www.omnest.com/

• Employs a high level declarative language for building models

• GUI based which is useful for

• Tracing

• Debugging

• Animating

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OMNeT++

Indicative Price for OMNeT++

Product

# of Units

Unit Price

Perpetual Licence

1 $19,600

2 – 5

$14,700

6 – 10

$11,800

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Summary

• Monitoring and modelling tools are critical to delivering ITIL Capacity

Management

• The future:

• Growing strength of the ‘big four’ as they expand their product

suites

• Nagios will continue to offer a viable open-source alternative

monitoring solution

• Excel will continue to be a compelling choice for analytical

modelling

• Low cost simulation modelling tools reduce initial outlay but

development costs are often higher than more expensive commercial

tools

• Tools discussed here can offer useful solutions in time or budget

constrained environments