Capacity Management Tools

Giorgio Bonuccelli
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Last updated on July 22, 2021
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Conventional capacity management methods are not robust enough for converged or virtual platforms

— Brought to you by the 2X Cloud Computing Team —

The push into cloud computing technology has revolutionized every business segment, and one can argue that the IT industry has benefited the most. With the introduction of cloud computing models such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), businesses are able to incorporate greater levels of agility for improved service levels, while enjoying highly scalable solutions at cost-effective prices. This approach has changed the way IT people work with technology and capacity management cannot be excluded. While cloud innovation offers highly scalable solutions, virtualization networks pose another challenge for the capacity planning team – primarily being that scalable resources are shared.

Conventional capacity management methods are not robust enough for converged or virtual platforms. Moreover, businesses are reluctant to redesign their monitoring solutions, as a great amount of investment has already been made in this area. However, virtual networks need additional tools. There are several essential aspects to monitor such as automation, security, reports, alerts and backup solutions. Moreover, the dynamic nature of the environment adds to the complexity of capacity management. When choosing the right tool for your capacity planning needs, you need to understand the present environment and future needs as well. In addition, the new solution should be able to integrate with the existing environment. Here are certain functions that a capacity management tool has to perform:

The capacity management tool should be able to work with an end-to-end approach wherein physical components like servers, storage devices and networking equipment as well as virtual resources need to be monitored. In addition, having an auto-discovery feature which allows the tool to automatically discover resources in your environment like operating systems, servers and services and collect resource metrics is an added advantage. Auto discovered resources are to be added to the inventory and any changes to these resources are to be detected and noted as well.

For proper capacity management and planning, you need to correctly assess available resources and envisage future needs as well. The key to deriving maximum efficiency from the system, at the best price, is to make the right provision of resources. While over-provisioning of resources increases your operational expenditure, under-provisioning of resources hits your business service levels and performance. In a highly scalable virtual environment wherein resources are shared, striking the right balance is a tough task. The right capacity management tools should have the ability to collect accurate performance data for proper provisioning of resources. At the same time, resource usage and test scenarios are combined to analyze future needs of the business. Trending and forecasting are the most important aspects of the capacity management tool even in virtual networks.

The capacity planning tool should be able to consolidate performance data from all data centers into a single database while monitoring changes to resources on a real-time basis. Resource usage has to be properly analyzed and over-allocated or unused resources can be freed and utilized for useful processes. With trending charts, what-if scenarios and accurate forecasting, the tool should be able to analyze the requirements of the present and future environments as well. In addition, reporting of the accurate provisioning requirement is desired.

When working with shared resources, capacity management tools have to proactively determine accurate resource requirements. Defining the entire workflow procedure, assessing the resource requirements, identifying metrics, measuring the performance and envisaging future work loads are some of the important tasks that need to be performed by the capacity management tool. While choosing a solution for your virtual networks, all these aspects have to be considered.

2X Software offers an easy-to-use, cost effective capacity management and planning tool within the award winning 2X Remote Application Server. This virtual desktop and application delivery solution helps you monitor the performance of the network, resource usage and enables you to proactively envisage future needs. 2X Remote Application Server is packed with features that seamlessly integrate within your existing infrastructure, while monitoring your dynamic environment on a real-time basis. Download 2X Remote Application Server and start improving your capacity planning today!