Capacity Management – Process Flow

Thresholds: These are defined at both the service-level as well as at the component (IT resource) level and articulate the upper bands beyond which either service or component performance is severely compromised. Effectively this translates into a negative impact to the business

All thresholds should be set below the level at which a resource is over-utilised, or below the targets in an SLA. For example, a threshold might specify that the usage on any individual CPU does not exceed 80% for a sustained period of one hour. If these thresholds are exceeded, alarms should be raised and exception reports produced.

Baseline: Baseline refers to an acceptable level of performance and usage of any service or component at normal levels of operation

Monitoring: This includes the monitoring of each service and component’s performance against defined thresholds and baselines.

Monitoring will provide 2 kinds of data
Ø Exception reports which will basically qualify when and how the thresholds for both service and component performance were surpassed
Ø Trend reports on a daily, weekly and monthly with comparisons against baselines. Trend reports are intended to help predict future threshold breaches.

Thresholds and baselines are set from the analysis of previously recorded data, they are the 'yardstick' by which Capacity Management can measure utilisation of IT infrastructure configuration items.

Monitoring leads to the next step of “Analysis”

Analysis: Monitoring data is analysed to try and identify and classify problems. Analysis then leads onto reporting, and then tuning.

Tuning: The identified problems are addressed, and the technical parameters of the system are fine tuned to improve efficiency. Implicit within tuning is also “Demand Management” which basically involves adjusting application and system workload to optimally use the allocated capacity. It is a mechanism by which the “peaks” in application usage are levelled out.

Once a tuning decision has been made it is implemented through the change management process. Finally the activity returns to monitoring, and the iteration begins again.

Note that tuning is an optional activity. If no problems are identified in analysis, then tuning will be unnecessary. Tuning is an expensive activity, as it involves high levels of skill.


Implementation: Typically any recommendations and changes suggested as a result of the tuning exercise is implemented through regular Change Management processes and teams.

Modelling (Forecasting): This is the most complex amongst all tasks in Capacity Management. This requires merging all the business growth data with the resource and service performance data to forecast capacity requirements needed to support future business growth.

Typically, the output of this exercise is a capacity plan, that clearly articulates the series of changes, enhancements required to the IT infrastructre (at both software and hardware components) that will eventually support the business growth anticipated in the future.
Business Growth Forecasts undertaken as part of Business Capacity Management are a very critical component to this step.