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6.7.1 Incident
Management
6.7.2 Problem
Management
6.7.3 Change
Management
6.7.4 Release Management
6.7.5 Configuration Management
6.7.6 Service Level Management
6.7.7 Financial Management
for IT Services
6.7.8 IT Service Continuity
Management
6.7.9 Availability Management
Capacity Management is closely related to business requirements. As such it is a vital element of the planning process and hence has close links with all aspects of Service Delivery. However Capacity Management maintains close links with Service Support to provide support for all operational performance and Capacity issues. The major Service Management interfaces are defined below.
Incident Management keeps Capacity Management informed of Incidents related to Capacity and performance. Capacity Management supports the Incident Management process by resolving and documenting Capacity related Incidents.
Co-ordinated through Problem Management, Capacity Management provides the Incident Management with diagnostic scripts and diagnostic tools to assist with Incident Management. For example, real-time performance and Capacity monitoring tools generate automatic reports to the Service Desk. As a result Capacity Management keeps the Incident Management and Problem Management processes informed of any potential performance or Capacity Problems through automatic alerts or recording known errors.
Capacity Management provides a specialist support role to identify, diagnose and resolve Capacity related Problems. As discussed above, Capacity Management utilises and makes available, diagnostic scripts and tools to support both the Incident and Problem Management processes. Capacity Problems and known errors are documented and made available through Problem Management.
Capacity Management supports the proactive role of Problem Management through the analysis of performance and Capacity information to identify any significant trends.
Capacity Management is represented on the Change Advisory Board, to assess the impact of Changes on existing Capacity and to identify additional Capacity requirements. The cumulative effect of Changes upon Capacity needs to be closely monitored by Capacity Management.
Additional Capacity requirements need to be included in the Capacity Plan and as such treated as Requests For Changes (RFCs) in their own right. Capacity Management raises RFCs for any planned upgrades, tuning activities and additional use of monitoring tools throughout the Infrastructure.
Capacity Management helps determine the distribution strategy, particularly where the network is used for distribution. Factors such as network bandwidth, host and target Capacity, distribution window and number of targets need to be considered as part of the distribution strategy. Capacity Management provides the necessary planning data and technical expertise to support the strategy on an ongoing basis and for individual distribution requirements.
The Release Management checklist includes the following check:
Clearly Capacity Management would provide the response to this request.
Immediately prior and post distribution, automated tools can be used to perform Capacity audits and to delay distribution and implementation if there is insufficient Capacity. Where automated tools are not used, these checks should still be performed manually to prevent Capacity related Incidents being raised.
Conceptually the CDB forms a subset of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The technical, service, utilisation, financial and business data all pertain to attributes of CIs (CIs) maintained in the CMDB. Without this information on individual CIs, Capacity Management cannot function effectively. Information provided by Capacity Management is made available to other processes via the CMDB. For example, Problem Management requires access to current and historic, service utilisation data to resolve Capacity Problems. SLM requires access to current and historic performance and workload data in order to set achievable SLA targets.
Capacity Management supports Service Level Management (SLM) to ensure that performance and Capacity targets for new or changed requirements can be achieved. Performance is dependent on a given workload, therefore both are required in an SLA with specific performance targets. Similarly there may be a requirement for Capacity Management to assist SLM in drafting and reviewing Operational Level Agreements and external contracts where Capacity or performance issues are involved.
For operational services, Capacity Management monitors and reports on performance and throughput to SLM. Where weak areas are identified, Capacity Management provides technical input to the overall Service Improvement Programme to improve service performance.
Capacity Management is concerned with economic provision of services. Financial justification and efficiency gains are demonstrated with the assistance of Financial Management. A cost summary should be provided as part of the Capacity Plan. Procurement recommendations included in the Capacity Plan should be compared with budget forecasts and actuals before purchase.
In organisations where Customers are charged according to resource utilisation Capacity Management provides Financial Management with the usage profiles that form the basis for Charging. Capacity Management provides assistance with the definition and execution of Capacity related Charging calculations. The use of modelling to predict demand also provides revenue estimates.
Capacity Management determines the Capacity required for all recovery options used. The minimum hardware and software configurations required are defined to provide the required performance and throughput levels following an invocation.
It is essential that the Capacity identified for recovery is maintained in line with that used in the live environment. The Capacity Plan should incorporate IT Service Continuity requirements and RFCs should be assessed for their impact on any recovery options.
Performance and Capacity Problems result in Unavailablity i.e. unacceptably slow performance is effectively the same as Unavailablity. Therefore Capacity and Availability Management share common goals and complement each other. Ideally Availability and Capacity Management should be aligned as there are many interdependencies. For example, implementing additional resilience requires consideration of the associated Capacity requirements. Capacity Management needs to be aware of Availability techniques deployed, such as mirroring or duplexing, in order to plan accurately for Capacity. The tools used by Availability Management and Capacity Management are often shared. Both require access to common planning, monitoring and alerting tools along with the CMDB. Both processes commonly use techniques such as Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). See Chapter 8 for details of these techniques.
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