FitSM Sample: CAPACITY PLAN

Sample: Capacity Plan

This document is a sample Capacity Plan. Version 11.5 (2015-04-21)

Comments & usage guidance

 This sample was created to give an idea of how a Capacity Plan could look like. All contents
are exemplary, and the sample may not fully reflect all contents and topics required in a given
scenario in practice.
 For this sample and its contents, the terminology (terms and definitions) according to FitSM-0
applies.
 This sample considers that a number of SLAs are specified and signed between the service
provider ACME IT and its customers. An example of the specification of an SLA is provided in
document “FitSM_Sample_SLA”.

1 This work was co-funded by the European Commission under the EC-FP7 project FedSM (contract number 312851).
 CAPACITY PLAN

Capacity Plan
1. INTRODUCTION
This document describes the capacity plan the service provider ACME IT has defined to fulfill the
demands of the SLAs agreed with its customers.

This document considers a set of services with SLAs signed between ACME IT and its customers,
namely the services “Scientific data warehouse (SciData-1), Scientific data warehouse plus (SciData-
2), Scientific data processing (SciProc-1), Data access (DatAcc-1), Data access plus (DatAcc-2), Data
fast mobility (DFM-1) and Data Access Cloudifier (DACloud-1)”. These SLAs have been specified
according to the model provided in the sample document FitSM_Sample_SLA.

The plan considers the number of subscribed services, and forecasts of service subscriptions aligned
to the incremental provision of services at ACME IT.

A methodological approach based on target satisfaction levels has been used to estimate the
resources needed to fulfill the SLAs at the agreed levels. This approach has been proved to be
effective and it has been preserved from the past versions of this Capacity Plan (the method was
proposed and implemented since Ver 8.3). The results of the estimation of technical and human
resources are provided.

Finally, this document identifies the potential risks that would be prevented by implementing this
capacity plan.

The most important changes of this capacity plan with respect to the last version (Ver 11.4) are: i)
updates in capacity considering newly subscribed customers from last version; ii) updates on
recommendations aligned to i).

2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This is a summary of conclusions drawn in this Capacity Plan. The technical analysis and justification
of these conclusions can be found in the content of this document.

ACME IT will face an increased number of subscriptions by the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2015. In order to
provision the services at the agreed levels, ACME IT should increase the capacity of CPU, memory,
and storage. In addition, it has also to increase human resources and additional operational cost.

For the 1st quarter of 2015 the CPU capacity should increase from 2,024.00 CPU units to 2,511.00
CPU units. For the 2nd quarter of 2015 the memory capacity should increase from 1,024GB to
1,256GB; and the storage capacity should increase from 3,024,000GB to 3,256,000GB. In addition,
ACME IT should consider hiring one more technical staff member by the 2nd quarter 2015 to support
the company operations. Finally, economical resources should be allocated in line with the
operational costs, which would be increased from 125,000 euro to 135,000 euro in the 1st quarter of
2015 and up to 142,000 euro by the 2nd quarter 2015.

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3. ANALYSIS OF CAPACITY EVOLUTION

This section provides the analysis of capacity for the service provider ACME IT. For this, the following
services with corporative SLAs are considered: Scientific data warehouse (SciData-1), Scientific data
warehouse plus (SciData-2), Scientific data processing (SciProc-1), Data access (DatAcc-1), Data
access plus (DatAcc-2), Data fast mobility (DFM-1), and Data Access Cloudifier (DACloud-1).

The capacity planning defined to fulfill the demands of the SLAs agreed with its customers as well as
an historical analysis are presented hereafter.

3.1. Customer services’ analysis and prediction

The following table shows the evolution of the subscribed customers to each of the above services in
the last two years (divided by quarter), and the potential growth in the following six months
according to the experienced evolution in service subscriptions (gray shaded). The prediction of
customers has been made considering the continuous increments experienced in the last years and
also the time frame of the corresponding SLAs.

TABLE 1. Evolution and prediction of subscribed customers per service at ACME IT

Number of Subscribed Number of Subscribed Prediction of

Service Customers in 2013 Customers in 2014 Customers in 2015
1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr 1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr 1st Qtr 2nd Qtr
Scientific data warehouse (SciData-1) 10 15 20 27 33 41 48 56 64 73
Scientific data warehouse plus (SciData-2) 15 18 21 23 27 31 33 37 40 44
Scientific data processing (SciProc-1) 32 46 58 68 78 86 98 107 116 125
Data access (DatAcc-1) 0 10 13 17 22 26 29 34 37 40
Data access plus (DatAcc-2) 0 0 17 18 18 16 17 21 23 25
Data fast mobility (DFM-1) 0 14 18 22 26 30 34 38 42 46
Data Access Cloudifier (DACloud-1) 23 26 29 31 36 39 41 45 48 52

3.2. Analysis of Resources and Capacity Plan

The provision of ACME IT services requires planning on the following technical resources: CPU
utilization; Memory utilization; HD utilization; and Access network rates. In addition, the operation
cost and the technical staff are also resources subject of capacity planning. In this section the past,
current and estimated resources needed to provision the services at the agreed SLA levels are
presented.

3.2.1. Estimation of resources utilization

A methodological approach based on users’ satisfaction levels has been used to estimate the
technical resources that should be allocated to fulfill the SLAs at the agreed levels. This approach has
been introduced in Ver 8.3 of the Capacity Plan and it takes into account two factors, namely almost
satisfied FctrAS and fully satisfied (FctrFS) factors. These factors are used to estimate the minimum and
the maximum amount of resources that should be allocated (Rscmin and Rscmax) to provide the
services at the agreed levels, which in turn are calculated with the following two expressions:

Rscmin=(1-FctrAS)(Average Resource Requirements for SLA fulfillment) …….. (1)

Rscmax =(1+FctrFS)(Average Resource Requirements for SLA fulfillment) …….. (2)
The above expressions are specialized for each technical resource subject of capacity planning (CPU,
memory, etc). For example, for CPU resource estimations these expressions are:

CPUmin=(1-FctrAS)(Average CPU requirement)

CPUmax =(1+FctrFS)( Average CPU requirement)

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The values ACME IT has considered for the estimation of physical resources are: FctrAS=0.3 and
FctrFS=0.2 respectively. The average resource requirement is obtained and/or mapped from the
technical information of the actual agreed SLAs. The following table shows the values that have been
considered for the estimation of technical resource requirements for ACME IT services:

TABLE 2. Requirements of average resources per service

Resource Requirements per SLA

Avg CPU units Avg Memory (GB) Avg Storage (GB) Avg Acess Rate (Mbps)
Scientific data warehouse (SciData-1) 1.5 1.7 3,500 1
Scientific data warehouse plus (SciData-2) 1.6 1.7 10,000 1.5
Scientific data processing (SciProc-1) 10 2 3,500 1
Data access (DatAcc-1) 2 2 3,500 5
Data access plus (DatAcc-2) 2 2 5,000 10
Data fast mobility (DFM-1) 2 2 10,000 5
Data Access Cloudifier (DACloud-1) 3 4 10,000 7

3.2.2. Historical estimations and resources’ usage

The Table 3 shows the historical resource allocation requirements (min and max), the actual
resources used, and the evolution of the available capacity in 2013 and 2014 (divided in quarters)
respectively. Non-technical resources are also provided in the tables. This document uses average
values for resource utilization.

The minimum (Min) and maximum (Max) resource requirements are calculated with expressions (1)
and (2) described in Section 3.2.1 respectively, for the average of each resource requirement per
service presented in Table 2, and considering the amount of subscribed customers per service
presented in Table 1. The resources “Actually used” are the amount of resources that have been
used by the customers and they have been obtained making use of the appropriate monitoring tools.
The “Available Capacity” is the capacity that ACME IT has had available to provide the services in
each quarter. Traditionally, ACME IT has maintained its available capacity higher than the maximum
capacity required (Max), and it has been increased when the actual capacity has reached 80% of the
available capacity.

TABLE 3. Historical of resources’ usage

2013
1st quarter 2nd quarter 3rd quarter 4th quarter
Resource Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available
used Capacity used Capacity used Capacity used Capacity
CPU (CPU units) 299.60 513.60 425.00 1,048.00 446.11 764.76 725.00 1,048.00 578.62 991.92 985.00 2,024.00 675.01 1,157.16 998.00 2,024.00
Memory (GB) 138.95 238.20 125.00 512.00 210.07 360.12 345.00 512.00 278.39 477.24 450.00 512.00 321.30 550.80 545.00 1,024.00
Storage (GB) 368,900 632,400 250,000 1,256,000 579,950 994,200 650,024 1,256,000 758,450 1,300,200 820,045 2,256,000 869,400 1,490,400 1,350,059 2,256,000
Access network
rates (Mbps) 157.85 270.60 165.00 1,024 273.00 468.00 1,024 1,024 446.25 765.00 654.00 1,024 505.05 865.80 845.00 1,024
Technical staff
(persons) NA NA 3 NA NA NA 3 NA NA NA 3 NA NA NA 4 NA
Operational cost
(Euro) NA NA 35,000 NA NA NA 65,000 NA NA NA 74,000 NA NA NA 96,000 NA

2014
1st quarter 2nd quarter 3rd quarter 4th quarter
Resource Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available Min Max Actually Available
used Capacity used Capacity used Capacity used Capacity
CPU (CPU units) 778.89 1,335.24 1,210.00 2,024.00 862.47 1,478.52 1,122.00 2,024.00 971.46 1,665.36 1,620.00 2,024.00 1,073.94 1,841.04 1,512.00 2,024.00
Memory (GB) 373.80 640.80 635.00 1,024.00 416.08 713.28 710.00 1,024.00 460.39 789.24 620.00 1,024.00 516.67 885.72 760.00 1,024.00
Storage (GB) 1,011,850 1,734,600 1,512,053 2,256,000 1,130,850 1,938,600 1,750,234 2,256,000 1,244,250 2,133,000 1,929,929 2,256,000 1,396,150 2,393,400 1,870,739 3,024,000
Access network
rates (Mbps) 576.45 988.20 855.00 2,048 620.55 1,063.80 925.00 2,048 677.25 1,161.00 750.00 2,048 772.45 1,324.20 978.00 2,048
Technical staff
(persons) NA NA 4 NA NA NA 4 NA NA NA 4 NA NA NA 5 NA
Operational cost
(Euro) NA NA 96,000 NA NA NA 101,000 NA NA NA 115,000 NA NA NA 125,000 NA

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3.2.3. Estimation of resources for the two first quarters of 2015

This section presents the estimation of resources utilization for the next half year based on trends
observed in the past and the approach based on satisfaction levels described earlier.

The Table 4 presents estimations for the minimum, maximum and actual resources to be used for the
first half of 2015 at ACME IT. In addition, the table shows the capacity that is proposed to be
available (Prop. Avail. Capacity - gray shaded) at ACME IT for the same period.

TABLE 4. Estimations of resources requirements and usage

Estimations for 2015

1st quarter 2nd quarter
Resource Min Max Actually Prop. Avail. Min Max Actually Prop. Avail.
to be used Capacity to be used Capacity
CPU (CPU units) 1,167.60 2,001.60 1,850.00 2,511.00 1,265.53 2,169.48 1,950.00 2,511.00
Memory (GB) 563.36 965.76 880.00 1,024.00 615.23 1,054.68 950.00 1,256.00
Storage (GB) 1,522,150 2,609,400 2,512,000 3,024,000 1,664,600 2,853,600 2,750,000 3,024,000
Access network
rates (Mbps) 840.70 1,441.20 1,100.00 2,048 915.60 1,569.60 1,350.00 2,048
Technical staff
(persons) NA NA 5 NA NA NA 6 NA
Operational cost
(Euro) NA NA 135,000 NA NA NA 142,000 NA

Graphical representations of the historic and estimations for resources utilization are provided in the
next three figures, each corresponding to CPU, memory and storage utilization respectively.

FIGURE 1. Evolution and estimations of CPU requirements and usage

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FIGURE 2. Evolution and estimations of memory requirements and usage

FIGURE 3. Evolution and estimations of storage requirements and usage

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4. RESOURCE ALLOCATION PROPOSAL SUMMARY

The estimations of resources made at ACME IT have produced reasonable results if they are
compared with the actual resources utilized (and monitored) for the last two years. The approach
taken has been proved to be efficient for resource estimations.

In general terms, the available capacity at ACME IT should be maintained above the maximum
calculated requirements, and it has to increase when the 80% of the available capacity is used. With
this regard, in order to meet the requirements of the users forecasted for the 1st and 2nd quarters of
2015 (see last two columns on Table 1), ACME IT should increase the capacity of CPU, memory and
storage according to the following details:

For the 1st quarter of 2015 the CPU capacity should increase from 2,024.00 CPU units to 2,511.00
CPU units. For the 2nd quarter of 2015 the memory capacity should increase from 1,024GB to
1,256GB; and the storage capacity should increase from 3,024,000GB to 3,256,000GB.

In addition, ACME IT should consider hiring one more technical staff member by the 2nd quarter 2015
to support the company operations. Finally, economical resources should be allocated in line with
the operational costs, which would be increased from 125,000 euro to 135,000 euro in the 1st
quarter of 2015 and up to 142,000 euro by the 2nd quarter 2015.

5. TECHNICAL RISKS
The technical risks for not following the plan presented in this document are summarized as follows:

- For the 1st quarter, shortages on CPU capacity would have a rather sensible negative impact
on users of the service Scientific data processing (SciProc-1). The quality of service for these
users would be severely degraded.
- For the 2nd quarter shortages on capacity for storage and memory would have a major
negative impact on services Scientific data warehouse plus (SciData-2), Data fast mobility
(DFM-1) and Data Access Cloudifier (DACloud-1).

6. Document control
Document ID
Document title
Definitive storage location
Document owner
Version
Last date of change
Next review due date
Version & change tracking
ACME-IT/CAP_Plan-2015-01
Sample: CAPACITY PLAN
www.acme-it.eu/internal/plans/2015/CapMan-Cap-Plan-2015-
01.doc
Frederick Avery – Capacity Manager
11.5
20 december 2014
1 may 2015
V11.5 updates aligned to service subscriptions and forecasts
V11.4 updates aligned to service subscriptions and forecasts
V11.3 service catalogue, subscriptions and forecasts updates
V11.2 updates aligned to service subscriptions and forecasts