Dynamic Capacity Management for Virtual Environments

Capacity planning is undergoing a transformation as virtualization technologies are adopted in IT environments. Virtualization shifts the focus away from the traditional measurement / analysis / trending activities that are used to estimate when workloads will outgrow their servers. Instead, organizations are faced with the discrete-time management of finite-element workloads running on dynamic pools of capacity.

This paper describes the nuances of capacity supply in virtual environments, how to model the demands that workloads place on this supply, and how to effectively align supply and demand in a way that maximizes efficiency and minimizes operational risk.