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ITIL: Service Delivery

Capacity Management

The Capacity Management discipline ensures that all current and future capacity and performance aspects of the IT infrastructure are provided to meet business requirements at an acceptable cost. PacketShaper's add-on modules for Shaping, Compression, and Acceleration can help make optimal use of available capacity.

Use the Shaping Module to Manage Bandwidth Wisely

When faced with bandwidth constraints and performance that is unpredictable, inequitable, inconsistent, or just too slow, a knee-jerk response might be to add more bandwidth. But an upgrade is not an effective solution. Too often, network managers spend large portions of their budgets on bandwidth upgrades in an attempt to resolve performance problems, only to find that the problems persist. Critical and poorly performing applications aren’t necessarily the applications that gain access to extra capacity. Usually, it’s less urgent, bandwidth-intensive applications that monopolize added resources.

Instead of increasing your link size, the first step should be to control the allocation of existing bandwidth. Make sure your critical business applications get the bandwidth they need to function well. Minimize the amount of bandwidth that can be used by unsanctioned recreational traffic (such as peer-to-peer, instant messaging, and Internet radio). The PacketShaper's Shaping Module offers controls for performing these tasks.

For procedures on managing bandwidth, see the following recommendations:

• Protect Critical Application Performance
• Block Unwanted Traffic
• Contain a Greedy Business Application
• Insulate Users of the Same Application
• Quarantine Bandwidth Abusers

To manage bandwidth of specific applications, see Per Application Strategies. Here you will find strategies for managing the performance of Citrix, ERP, streaming media, and so forth.

Use the Compression Module to Increase Virtual Bandwidth

Another way to get the most out of existing WAN resources is to use PacketShaper's application-aware compression. Traffic size reductions of 3x or more can provide sizable cost benefits. The advantages of transferring more traffic through a limited link are compelling:

• Make critical applications perform faster
• Ease congestion on saturated WAN links
• Postpone or avoid bandwidth upgrades
• Roll out new enterprise applications confidently
• Reduce monthly charges if bills are based on number of bytes transferred

See Xpress Overview. You can also read the Compression white paper.

Use the Acceleration Module in High-Latency Environments

One of the major challenges of application delivery capacity is serving marginal sites in far-away locations, such as overseas factories or sales offices. Even with a bandwidth upgrade, high latency may still impact application performance enough that total user capacity on the link is not sufficiently increased. PacketShaper's Acceleration Module can fix this problem, mitigating the effects of latency so that richer applications can still be served over the WAN to all locations and not just geographically convenient ones.

See the discussion on acceleration in the Xpress Overview or you can read the Acceleration white paper. Note that the Acceleration Module requires PacketWise v8.0 or higher.

Monitor Capacity

PacketShaper's reports and graphs can help you analyze how heavily your WAN link is loaded relative to its capacity. These reports provide visual proof whether traffic utilization is peaking or averaging close to the link size. With this information, you can determine if current link capacity is sufficient or if a bandwidth upgrade is warranted. Analyze your Link's Behavior provides details on performing this analysis.

Link utilization can also be monitored real time. A speedometer-like gauge displays the real-time rate for each link, and the needle on the gauge dynamically updates as the rate fluctuates. In addition, a line graph displays Inbound and Outbound rates at the current time (now) and tracks the rates over the last three minutes. This tool can also show real-time bandwidth utilization of specific applications. See Show Real-Time Graphs for details.

View the other disciplines in the ITIL Service Delivery area:

Service Level Management  

Continuity Management

Availability Management

Cost Management

Security Management