Capacity Management: Assess

Before a Capacity Plan can be put together, the organization needs to understand normal operating levels and the practical capacity of IT resources. Most manufacturers quoted performance numbers are not achievable in a production environment and thus need to be assessed empirically. Log data plays an important role in this assessment. By analyzing log data, a pattern or baseline of current usage can be established. By monitoring Service Levels and Incident Report rates in parallel, the actual resource capacity can be determined.

Log Intelligence reports that can be used to assess and baseline utilization:

  • VPN utilization patterns
  • Network traffic patterns
  • Server, application, and information level access patterns
  • E-mail traffic patterns