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What is capacity planning, anyway?

  • Artykuł

I have an entire category about capacity planning, so it's probably time to define what capacity planning is. Here’s what current Microsoft literature has to say:

  • “Developing a Capacity Plan, analyzing the current situation, and predicting the future use of the IT infrastructure and resources needed to meet the expected demand for IT services” — Microsoft Solutions for Management Glossary
  • “The process of forecasting system and environment utilization and workloads and then developing plans to ensure that the system and environment will be able to support anticipated performance demands” — Microsoft Operations Framework Glossary
  • “Capacity planning […] looks at the application in its production environment, defining the number of requests an application can handle, based on a fixed hardware infrastructure” — Operating .NET-Based Applications
  • “Determining the software and hardware configuration required to handle a certain user load” — Tools for Capacity Planning

All of these are servicable definitions, but let’s face it, none of them exactly roll off the tongue. Instead, here’s my current favorite:

“The process of planning, analyzing, sizing, and optimizing capacity to satisfy demand in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost” — Capacity Management SMF

Technically this is defining capacity management, of which capacity planning is but a (vital) part, but you really can’t have one without the other. Plus it’s the only definition written in a lyrical enough style that I have a hope of remembering it…

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2006
    Jonathan,

    I started a wikipedia page on 'Capacity Management' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_management

    Paul
  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2006
    Thanks Paul
  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    I would like to receive any mailings of e-mail information on what the Industry is defining as Capacity Planning and how do you determine what your true cpacity is and when you're at 100% capacity.
  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    Hi Keith - I don't think we have any mailings on the topic. The links in my post to the various Microsoft documents are probably the closest we come. Email me (use the "Email" link in the header) if you want more details