the changing landscape of capacity management for the mainframe

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF CAPACITY MANAGEMENT FOR THE MAINFRAME

Nick Varleynvarley@syncsort.com

Quote

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Who said this?

: Elon Musk ?

: Thomas J. Watson Jr ?

: David Bowie ?

: Steven Hawking ?

Wisdom from 25 centuries ago!

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Capacity Management is…

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Capacity management is a process used to manage information technology (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT resources are right-sized to meet current and future business requirements in a cost-effective* manner. Wikipedia

* I’d add here: “and timely”

Large

Bad

Good

Resource（Cost）

Service（Response time）

Workload

Few

ManySmall

See Do

Plan It is important to cycle Plan-Do-See continuously for maintaining SLA and for spending wisely.

Performance metrics of Workload, Resource and Service must be measured and balanced

appropriately

“You cannot control it if it couldn’t be measured!!”

Continuous Optimization

Benefits of Capacity Management

Today’s Reality

Management is focused on cost

– The cost of disruption in services can be severe

– Focus is on immediate payback and ongoing reduction in IT budgets

Large and diverse data sources, including business and transactional data

Off- and on-premise

Virtualization and self-service = Cloud

Time is limited, staff numbers lean, budgets tight

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Capacity Management was… (is…?)

Manual process

Dependent on SMF/RMF

Slow / ponderous

Not business-centric

Reliant on wizards

What changes in scope and processes require a philosophy change

IT Business

Business IT

Capacity Management must become a

ITIL adoption - Capacity Management across the Enterprise -> increase maturity

Reporting must elevate to be business- or customer-centric

Capacity Risk Assessments – regulatory/audit requirements

New technologies to embrace, new data sources, better reporting techniques

Need to embrace Multi-Tiered Applications; no more “them ‘n’ us”

Why organizations are reviewing CM and their current tools

Inspired by ITIL

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COMPONENT SERVICE BUSINESS

UNIXReporting/

Monitoring

z/OS

IntegrationCAB

Incident/Problem

Focus Reactive Project based implementation

Some GUI Simulation

Planning Some trending

ITIL - Capacity Management within the Enterprise – Low Maturity

ITIL - Capacity Management within the Enterprise – High Maturity

COMPONENT SERVICE BUSINESS

Unified Reporting – Capacity Portal

Enterprise

Integration

CAB

Incident/Problem

Focus Reactive -and- Proactive

Tracked response times

Agreed SLA targets

Business Volumes

Transaction Volumes

Facilities

SLM Service OwnersConfig. Management

Reporting/

Monitoring

PlanningTrending/Modelling/The Capacity Plan

Capacity Risk Assessment

Capacity RISK Index October

Capacity Manager

Capacity CATEGORY RISK CONTROL MEASURES

Networks

DME Licensing TelephonyCore Router/SWITCH

Performance

CELLPHONE Network availability

CORE SERVERS

Server Processing CAPACITY

Tuxedo CAPACITY Vmware capacity

Mainframe MIPS Capacity

Storage/SAN

DISK STORAGE CAPACITY

DIP CAPACITYStorage array network

capacity

Inter SWITCH Link Capacity

Non Production Environments

NPE CORE Database Server capacity

NPE storage capacityNon production

VMWARE CAPACITY

NPE overnight Batch IMPACT

Capacity CATEGORY RISK CONTROL MEASURES

EcommerceTransactional Web

site Capacity

WEB SITE PERFORMANCE -

Synthetic Monitoring

Overnight processingProduction Batch Completion times

DatabaseLIVE database FileSystem capacity

Core Database performance

Capacity Management

Component metric collection

Service CapacityReports

Service Demand

CAPACITY INCIDENTS caused by change

Capacity related PROBLEM records

Capacity Category review

OtherSharePoint server

performanceSharePoint file system

capacity

Overall Trend Outlook Commentary

Overall risk currently amber. Grey fields are work in progress. Amber fields are explained below.

Additional disk space being added w/e Dec 3

New data sources, new ways to get data

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RESTful API = http(s) + JSON format

{“key1”:value, “key2”:value, … }

REST=REpresentational State Transfer

Useful for “agentless” capture of data,

or, for sending data off mainframe to

e.g. Splunk

Dynamics of the multi-tiered applications: the transaction is King

Network Firewall

Proxy

VirtualWeb

ServersDirectory

Server

Load Balancer

App Servers

Mainframe

DB

Partner App

ExternalCloud

Web Services

Msg. Broker

Firewall

VirtualWeb

Servers

App Servers

Partner App

Wire Xfer>$100K

Wire Xfer<$100K

New reporting techniques – pick what works for your audience

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Line Printer Old Look Graphical New(er) Look

Easy self-service reporting, web based, dynamic, flexible

We, the workers, demand…(but very nicely)

…Mainframe to be an integral part of the family; no bimodal (2-speed) IT thank you very much, Gartner…

…Understanding of interactions with Multi-Tiered applications; tool up to see end to end and top to bottom

…Open dialogs with service managers, business leaders; let’s communicate until it hurts

Remove the reliance solely on component-level reporting

– Mechanical reporting -> mechanical predictions

Discuss/promote the value of Capacity Management with business stakeholders

Match business KPIs with technical data

Reach out to other IT areas; stop being a technical silo

Correlate customer, business, service, technical data

Validate predictions against actuals and continually refine the prediction process

Incorporate Customer, Business and Service views

Service View Dashboard

Correlation of Business Transactions vs CICS Transactions

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A central repository for all data

– This could be several databases / technologies, but needs to be made to look and feel like a single entity

– Pipe data in through the likes of RESTful or web APIs

– Talk to other teams to see what data they have and can provide

Data Analytics and Data Mining techniques

– Many new and exciting options – Big Data / open source / unstructured databases

Correlate data to uncover natural “units of capacity” for quick planning of changes

Plans for addressing new technologies

Why Do It?

Capacity Management should add value to the business

– Analysis and reporting suitable for the intended target

– Identification of under/over used resources

– Strategic planning and budgeting - the right money at the right time

– KPIs/Service Levels met and sustained, service disruptions reduced/eliminated

Get Capacity Management recognized as a strategic activity, not a tactical one

– Resourced appropriately

– Tooled up appropriately

– Represented at senior levels

Get buy in and trust from the business by talking to everyone in their language

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Summary

Mainframe Capacity Management continues to evolve

Aim for Capacity Management to be at Business-level or higher!

Modernize data acquisition and reporting to support business objectives

Mentor, tutor other areas of IT, as wide as you can go; you’re good at this stuff!

Ensure your voice is heard

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QUESTIONS?

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THANK YOU