It looks as though all organizations will have some form of Cloud implementation over the next few years. This could be a mix of private and public Cloud, and for public cloud it could involve a variety of external providers. What you buy across the cloud could vary from simple Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) such as processing power and disk storage through to full Software As A Service (SaaS) such as salesforce.com. What is without doubt, is that the range of environments you will have to manage will become ever more complex. What you can and should do in terms of capacity management will vary with the nature of your own implementation. Join us and find out what it will be realistic for the capacity manager to provide to the business in this complex world of interacting services, and how Metron will help you achieve it.

1. Metron Athene
Cloud Computing and Capacity Management
Leading the way
in
Capacity and Performance Management
Charles Johnson – Principal Consultant
1/3/2012 www.metron-athene.com 1

2. Agenda
• What is Cloud Computing?
• What is Capacity Management?
• Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
• Application Transaction Management
• Reporting and Forecasting
• Summary
1/3/2012 www.metron-athene.com 2

3. What is Cloud Computing?
To be considered a cloud . . .
• On demand self service
“A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server
time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human
interaction with each service’s provider.”
• Resource Pooling
“The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers
using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources
dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.”
• Rapid Elasticity
“Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases
automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the
consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited
and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.”

4. What is Cloud Computing?

5. What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud Ownership (or Deployment Models)
• Public / External
- Available to General Public
- Owned by Organization selling Cloud Services
• e.g. Amazon or Google
• Private / Internal
- Solely for organization
- Onsite or hosted by 3rd Party
• Community
- shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns , i.e.
Policy or Compliance
- Managed either on or offsite by organizations or 3rd Party
• Hybrid
- composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but
are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application
portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

6. What is Cloud Computing?
Service Models
• HaaS/IaaS – Hardware or Infrastructure as a Service
• PaaS – Platform as a Service
• SaaS – Software as a Service
• AaaS – Application as a Service
• MaaS – Monitoring as a Service
• Consumption-based / Subscription-based pricing

7. Popular Public Cloud Applications

8. What is Capacity Management?
Capacity Management
is Business Decision Support
• Reduces risk of demand exceeding available resources
• Protects ROI
• Every infrastructure change is a business decision
• Every infrastructure change has a cost impact
Capacity Management
equals
Business Decisions
1/3/2012 www.metron-athene.com 8

9. What is Capacity Management?
Capacity Management is
• Strategic and Proactive
• Assists in managing service
quality
• Assists in managing cost
expenditures
• Aligns business and IT
• Match needs and cost during
growth
www.metron-athene.com

10. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
CAPACITY MANAGEMENT
AND THE CLOUD
1/3/2012 www.metron-athene.com 10

11. Forrester: Cloud needs Capacity Management
Capacity management is the top operational concern--it's also a
mystery as the underlying capacity of virtualized servers in public
clouds is largely unknown.
www.metron-athene.com

12. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
• Capacity on Demand - Too Little, Too Much or Just Right?
• Automation and Control
• Protecting your „loved ones‟
• Scalability - In / Up or Out?
• Old Habits – The Potential Risks

13. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Capacity on Demand
• Too Little (under capacity)
- Application Sizing not performed
- Controlled by limits
- Lower usage costs
- Service Levels affected – by how much?
- High impact on business?
• Loss of service
• SLA breach penalties

14. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Capacity on Demand
• Too Much (over capacity)
• Gartner – “most organizations overprovision their
infrastructure by at least 100%”
• Unlimited access to resources
• Service Levels unaffected
• Costs – higher resource usage, software licensing
• Impacts on other services
- Poor performance
- Wasted resources (multi virtual CPU (vSMP) & single-
threaded applications)
- VM Sprawl
- Increased pressure to manage virtual resources

15. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Capacity on Demand
• Just Right?
• Application Sizing performed
• Efficient use of IaaS
• Acceptable Service Levels
- continuous review and adjustment
• Controlled by shares, limits and reservations
• Continuous monitoring and tuning
- Configuration adjustments (CPU, Memory)
- VM consolidation
- Power off unused ESX hosts
• Right Balance
- Find the equilibrium (service / cost)

16. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Find the right balance

17. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Automation and Control
• Rapid Elasticity - Guest Migration and Portability, Templates,
Golden Host
• Resource Pools (limits, shares and reservations)
• Load Balancing
- DRS (Automatic, Partial or Manual)
• Affinity
- VM to VM or VM to Host
- CPU
• Fine grained tweaking for performance gains – Single
Threaded Apps
• Licensing

18. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Protecting your „loved ones‟
• Critical business applications
• Service Levels must be met
• Highest Priority (shares, unlimited), CPU affinity
• Must guarantee resources (reservations)
• High Availability Clusters
• VMware - Fault Tolerance
• Trade offs
- “just in case” capacity management could impact on other
services
- Significant impact? Think about scaling out or up . . .

19. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Scalability – Out
For
• Use existing hardware
• Short lead time
- No wait for new equipment
• No need for hardware upgrade?
- Costs are acceptable
- SLA‟s are met – but for how long?
Against
• Older and slower equipment
- Not 64 bit, latest chipset technology
- OK for the short term, but medium or long term?
• Additional Costs
- Licensing
- Extended hardware support > 3 years
- Power consumption and space

20. Cloud Capacity Challenges
Scaling Up?

21. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Scalability – Up?
For
• Upgrade to latest technology
- faster CPUs / more memory
- 64 bit compatible, hyperthreading enabled
- Consolidation (more workload)
- Greener
• Efficiency Savings
- All may outweigh scaling out to older systems
Against
• Longer lead time
- Procurement of new equipment
- Decommission old servers
• Costs
- Hardware Upgrade
- Licensing

22. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Private Public
• More things to measure – rapid response to new needs
• Correct sizing – minimize „cloudbursts‟
• Compare performance against SLAs
• Constant reassessment of provisioning requirements
• Evaluate provider against „good practice‟
www.metron-athene.com

23. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Scalability –In?
• Spare capacity?
- Sweat the assets by consolidating workloads
• Use periods of inactivity
- Migrate workloads between hosts
• Turn off unused hosts
- E.g. VMware DPM
• Cost savings
- Reduce Power
- Reduce licenses

24. Cloud Capacity Management Challenges
Old Habits – Potential Risks
• Gartner – “Through 2015, more than 70% of private cloud
implementations will fail to deliver operational, energy and
environmental efficiencies.”
• Infrastructure or application hugging
- Silo mentality “what‟s mine is mine”
• Lack of resource sharing
- Through lack of trust and confidence
• “Just in case” capacity planning
- Leads to over provisioning

25. Application Transaction Management
Cloud Computing
and Business Application Transactions
Must understand the application transactions
end-to-end
Are service levels are being met?
1/3/2012 25

26. Application Transaction Management
Cloud Aware!
Virtual
Physical
Hybrid
www.metron-athene.com

27. Application Transaction Management
• Problem – Ensuring Reliable IT Services
• Solution – Dynamic Transaction Path Detection
Application Transaction Management
Partner
Web Cloud App
Services Partner
App App
Servers
Virtual
Web
Servers
Firewall
Wire Xfer Wire Xfer Msg.
Broker
<$100K >$100K
Load
Balancer Mainframe
App
Proxy Servers DB Server
Virtual
Network Firewall Web Directory
Servers Server

28. Application Transaction Management
• Tracking transactions through all hops
Real User
Experience
Application
Network
Infrastructure

29. Reporting and Forecasting
• Implement Automated Reporting & Alerting
- What do we need?
• What recurrence?
• Application and component
- RAG Thresholds – SLA information (capacity, availability,
response time)
- Forecasting – Trending or Analytical Modeling or both?
Make effective use of information . . . . . . .

30. Reporting and Forecasting
Which servers are hosting which applications?
o Understanding the relationships
o Understanding the volumes
o Understanding the resource consumption
Accurately assigning resource usage

31. Summary
• Cloud Computing provides agility / elasticity to manage resources
• Capacity Management is critical to ensure Service Levels are met
• Capacity Management for Cloud environments is critical to ensure
the efficient use of resources
• Application Transaction Management for Cloud applications is a
must to become successful

32. Summary
• Apply same Capacity Management principles
- Gather the necessary information
• Business – application sizing, usage periods, growth
numbers
• Service – what are the SLO‟s, SLA‟s, how do they impact on
the business?
• Component – gather and store the data
- configuration, performance, application

33. Summary
• Business runs on transactions, transactions run on IT
• Transactions are the missing link between
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Business
• Fully track transactions to optimize capacity management
• Valuable business/IT data is created
• Unprecedented visibility is gained
• Enabling the use of this valuable data to drive better capacity
management decisions and predictions