Capacity Planning

IGI’s virtualization methodology includes Capacity Planning in the Design Phase. Capacity Planning is done to correct size every element of the physical and virtualized environment.

So why is this important?

To begin with, there are several important questions we must consider when designing the virtual environment such as:

• At what level of performance will a service exceed the capacity of a virtual machine?

• What are the physical resource levels required for the virtual machine?

• How much of the physical resource availability is being consumed by each virtual machine?

• If my system fails over, will the receiving virtual machine have the needed capacity?

• What is my lowest performing component of the virtualized environment?

These and other important questions are answered by Capacity Planning. There are many components in the Virtual Infrastructure so it is most important that every component be sized to support the demand load for the virtualized environment. Remember the lowest performing component of the infrastructure becomes the limiting factor of the virtualized system. It follows that we do not want to design for high end capacity when that level of system performance cannot be reached. Design for more costs more. We want maximum performance at minimum cost. That’s the real reason for Capacity Planning.

• Plan-business decision to virtualize

• Architecture-requirements and graphical representation of virtualization

• Design-Capacity Plan, hardware and software, and system configuration

• Build-Proof of Concept or Pilot Test-Quality Assurance, system monitoring, and performance tuning

• Deploy-roll out virtual systems

• Migrate-Physical to Virtual migration

• Manage and Operate-virtual environment operation and management 24/7