Planning for Capacity in a Dynamically Changing Environment
IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics delivers key performance metrics across IBM z/OS and key subsystems for fast, easy-to-consume performance analysis.
Today’s digital enterprises are going through an unprecedented transformation. With changing consumption patterns and reprioritization of workloads and applications, demand characteristics are increasingly unpredictable. Organizations now need to forecast and plan for surges in resource utilization more than ever as today’s volatile times create new demand patterns driven by increased use of online workloads. In addition, operations and logistics demands are driving the need for more flexible capacity planning.
Leveraging the wealth of operational data provided by IBM Z® to curate timely insight, IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics (see Figure 1) is part of IBM’s Z AIOps family of solutions. With a focus on managing applications and workloads that span hybrid clouds (including on-prem resources like IBM Z) in a more predictive manner, IBM Z AIOps serves to integrate intelligence at the point of need into your IT performance and capacity management efforts.
Figure 1. IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics delivers key performance metrics across IBM z/OS® and key subsystems for fast, easy-to-consume performance analysis
Combine that with the need to make the most of existing resources to ensure that applications are online and supporting the business today and into the future. The role of the capacity planner is essential to this task and will depend on accurate data to identify cost and resource-optimization opportunities.
Built-in forecasting capabilities are designed to help clients predict future resource needs based on current utilization and capacity that can be aligned with expected growth. With near real-time analysis of system performance and dashboards on key performance metrics—delivered on modern easy-to-adopt and expand interfaces like IBM Cognos Analytics, Splunk or Elastic Stack—performance analysis and capacity management on IBM Z becomes less complex.
Recent updates to IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics deliver “what if” capabilities to frame the impact of potential environment changes such as future hardware upgrades and other capital changes needed to support business goals. Current performance can be measured accurately with the existing configuration; what benefit might we see if we were to change this environment or decide to upgrade our processors to a newer model? Can we forecast the potential benefit before making the investment decision? Such hypothetical analysis is particularly important in an environment where physically testing configuration changes becomes impossible.
Leveraging the wealth of operational data provided by IBM Z® to curate timely insight, IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics (see Figure 1) is part of IBM’s Z AIOps family of solutions. With a focus on managing applications and workloads that span hybrid clouds (including on-prem resources like IBM Z) in a more predictive manner, IBM Z AIOps serves to integrate intelligence at the point of need into your IT performance and capacity management efforts.
Figure 1. IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics delivers key performance metrics across IBM z/OS® and key subsystems for fast, easy-to-consume performance analysis
Performance and Capacity Management Is More Critical Than Ever
When tooling differs across the hybrid IT infrastructure and knowledge about system and application needs is only known to a small set of key experts, it becomes a challenge to get a view of end-to-end performance, capacity and service management across multiple platforms and infrastructure, and difficult to anticipate spikes in demand.Combine that with the need to make the most of existing resources to ensure that applications are online and supporting the business today and into the future. The role of the capacity planner is essential to this task and will depend on accurate data to identify cost and resource-optimization opportunities.
The Role of IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics
IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics has been developed to address these problems by removing dependence on multiple tools, delivering a single integrated solution for collection, analysis and reporting on data. By leveraging SMF and structured logs from across the enterprise, it’s easier to gain a holistic view of performance to assess the current state for critical decision-making.Built-in forecasting capabilities are designed to help clients predict future resource needs based on current utilization and capacity that can be aligned with expected growth. With near real-time analysis of system performance and dashboards on key performance metrics—delivered on modern easy-to-adopt and expand interfaces like IBM Cognos Analytics, Splunk or Elastic Stack—performance analysis and capacity management on IBM Z becomes less complex.
Recent updates to IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics deliver “what if” capabilities to frame the impact of potential environment changes such as future hardware upgrades and other capital changes needed to support business goals. Current performance can be measured accurately with the existing configuration; what benefit might we see if we were to change this environment or decide to upgrade our processors to a newer model? Can we forecast the potential benefit before making the investment decision? Such hypothetical analysis is particularly important in an environment where physically testing configuration changes becomes impossible.
Learn More
IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics is an integral part of IBM’s portfolio for leveraging analytics to support the entire IT operations team. It is a core part of the IBM Z Operations Insight Suite®, which additionally brings in IBM Z® Operations Analytics for problem identification and anomaly detection using machine learning for operations. Learn more about IBM Z Performance and Capacity Analytics on the IBM Marketplace and watch the video. You can also learn more about how your company can progress along the IBM Z AIOps journey at ibm.biz/ZAIOpsJourney.