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Rob Ferrari, IS
Support Director at The MCPS-PRS Alliance
is a firm believer in the role of capacity
planning and Performance Management,
and has been working with Metron since
the mid-80s. “In
common with many other organizations nowadays,
we are IT-centric. If our VMS systems were
not functioning correctly, there would
be a fundamental impact on the workings
of the whole company.”
The Alliance works with Metron on a consultancy
basis, preferring to outsource their requirements
rather than bringing the Capacity Planning
and Performance Management role into the
company.
Rob Ferrari:
“I don’t
believe that we can justify employing a
full-time experienced Capacity Planning
specialist. In my view, it is quicker and
cheaper for us to draw upon Metron’s
expertise as and when we need their help.”
The Alliance operates a Compaq Alpha Server
clustered configuration which supports
the database containing all the Societies’
business information. In 2001, the operating
company commissioned Metron to undertake
a study to assess the impact of migrating
data from an ICL mainframe to the VMS-based
solution. This report indicated that an
upgrade to the Societies’ CPU would
be required. The upgrade was completed a
few months after Metron’s study had
been completed, together with a number
of other recommendations.
In February 2002,
Metron was commissioned to undertake
a further study with the aim of providing
a ‘health check’ and revalidation
of the previous performance and capacity
predictions. The Alliance was keen to
find out if there had been changes to
the performance of the system since the
previous study. They also wanted to model
the effect on performance of increased
workloads and be able to assess how much
additional work could be handled by the
current Alpha Server configuration.
Metron’s consultants collected data
from the relevant systems and presented
their report in March 2002.
Based on information collected and analyzed
from the existing configuration, it was
clear that one of the processors would experience
saturation at peak hour consumption rates
during May 2002. A CPU upgrade was recommended.
The report then focused
on describing the modeling activities which
had been undertaken to assess the likely
effects on the system following the implementation
of the recommended upgrade. Predictive analysis
modeling for both a ‘day-time model’
and a ‘weekend’ batch processing
workload was carried out. The models indicated
that the Alpha Server cluster, once upgraded,
would be able to support a 40% increase
in workload before users experienced degraded
response times. |
The use of
OpenVMS to enhance workload balancing was
also recommended. For the batch workload
environment, Metron predicted that the time
to run the batch would be reduced from 45
hours to 21.5 hours, and that with the use
of a proprietary scheduling tool, CPU utilization
in excess of 80% could be achieved.
Rob Ferrari:
“This most
recent study was undertaken with the professionalism,
care and understanding of our business that I have come to associate with Metron.
Predictive analysis
is a very useful exercise, enabling us to
upgrade both accurately and at the most
appropriate time. In my view, it is a fallacy
to say that IT managers might as well just
go out and buy a new server when they are
faced with poor response times. With tight
cost controls and justifications required
for any new investments, this is simply
not a realistic option for many companies.
During this year
we will be providing access to our main
database to a large proportion of our 30,000
plus members and we will be working with
Metron again to model the impact on our
systems of this large number of new users.
I’m also confident that this year
we will really start to use Metron’s
APR service in earnest. I regard this as
part of our philosophy of outsourcing these
specialist activities. I am sure that we
will get some valuable reports from the
APR service as well as the ability to collect
historical data from our NT servers and
then carry out some modeling work.”
The APR (Application
Service Provider) service has been designed
to provide organizations with ‘on demand’ performance
reporting over the internet, without the
need to invest in either the Athene software
or the personnel to handle Performance Management
issues. Athene APR incorporates over fifteen
hundred performance metrics; clients can
choose from these in order to ensure that
the reports meet their own specific needs.
The frequency and mode of delivery of the
reports also varies according to the client’s
requirements.
The Alliance will
also use Metron’s
consultants to look at server consolidation,
modeling of Oracle applications on NT servers
as well as the on-going annual ‘health
checks’.
Rob Ferrari:
“Whilst capacity
planning is not a large part of my job,
it is absolutely key. Nowadays IT systems are critical to the day-to-day operation
of a company, and they are also extremely visible. If something goes wrong, then
everyone knows about it almost immediately.
Performance Management
and Capacity Planning services from Metron
ensure that we have a detailed understanding
of our systems, how they are behaving,
how they are likely to behave in the future
and the actions we need to take to guarantee
a consistently high quality service to
our users.”
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