How to Right-Size

Your POWER9 Capacity
and Configuration
 The POWER9 Movement which may encompass many operating environ-
ments such as IBM i, AIX, VIOS and Linux.
Is Underway
You’ve no doubt heard about the recent launch
Unfortunately, undertaking a detailed evaluation
IT managers of IBM’s POWER9 servers, with their blazing-fast
of your utilization and projected needs can be a
reported dealing with processing speeds and ability to handle advanced
cumbersome or intimidating process, making it
an average of workloads. That said, your businesses may be run-
easy to sweep aside. According to the 2016 Glob-
ning older Power technology (POWER5, POWER6,
6 unexpected or POWER7) and will consider a move to POWER8
al IT Management Survey, IT “fires” are a large
drain on team resources. In the study, IT manag-
issues or POWER9. But, when it comes right down to it,
ers reported dealing with an average of six unex-
how do you know:
each week, with each pected issues each week, with each situation tak-
situation taking ing eight staff members an average of three hours
• Which model
and 16 minutes to properly address. Not only
• How many cores
8 staff • How to configure them
does this mean team members are already spread
members • How much memory you need
thin and don’t have time for planning initiatives,
but it also begs the question of whether some of
an average of • Which storage options to select
these issues could be happening due to a lack of
effective planning.
3 hours and A Common Problem When
16 minutes Evaluating New Server Technology Your goal is always to avoid a critical situation
When new technologies come onto the market,
to properly where you aren’t able to effectively run your busi-
many IT organizations get excited about the capa-
ness in an optimal way. For example, Target.com
address bilities without carefully analyzing what they
crashed after large numbers of shoppers went on-
actually require to run their business, includ-
line for a well-publicized sales event that the com-
ing any projected changes. Just as it’s important
pany didn’t support with the appropriate level of
to determine the number of employees you need
web capacity. No business wants to find themselves
to carry out day-to-day work, you also need to
managing this sort of disaster.
plan capacity for the underlying infrastructure,

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 The Solution:
Effective Capacity Planning Not long ago, capacity planning was strictly fo-
cused on infrastructure in the on-premises data
In the 2016 Global IT Management survey men-
center. The top priority was keeping an eye on
tioned previously, researchers found another in-
servers, storage, and network bandwidth to ensure
teresting stat: 61 percent of respondents believed
resources were properly utilized.
they could consolidate servers to reduce infra-
structure administration workload. Yet, a hunch
Adoption of virtualization eliminated the fixed tie
like this requires investigation and data.
between an application and the infrastructure.
The capacity planning process then had to take
Capacity planning plays a critical role in making
things like workload placement and resource
sure everything stays up and running at maxi-
pools into consideration.

61%
mum efficiency. Whether you open another office,
launch a new product or service, or simply want
Regardless of technology, you need to know about
to be sure your infrastructure will be reliable and
future business demands and how they will im-
cost-effective, capacity planning will help you
pact capacity requirements over time. Only then
of respondents keep service levels up and costs down.
can you optimize your sourcing strategy and cost.
believed they could
consolidate servers While capacity planning has long been import-
It’s also important to remember that paradigm
to reduce infrastructure ant for minimizing the risk of downtime and
shifts are rarely binary, nor do they happen over-
administration maximizing uptime, reliability, and efficiency,
night. You will most likely have services running
the best ways to optimize service delivery have
workload on older technologies that still need to be man-
changed over time.
aged. Your capacity planning process has to cover
all technologies used by your organization.

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How Scott & White Saves
With Capacity Planning
Scott & White is the largest
multi-specialty practice in Texas.
Scott & White boasts more than 500
physicians at its 15 regional clinics
throughout the central part of the
state. Scott & White uses capacity
planning software daily and contin-
ues to exploit its advantages in a
variety of projects. Most recently, the
software was used to aid in a server
consolidation project. Managing the
environment had become more costly
than the hardware itself, due primarily
to power, cooling, and space costs
that far outpaced the cost of servers
and other IT gear.
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“In our case,
[capacity planning]
proved that consolidating
our server population would
maximize CPU and RAM
utilization. Modeling showed that
higher utilization—while still
maintaining service levels—
could easily be achieved
through micro-
Capacity planning is a decision-making tool
partitioning.”
—System
Administrator,
Scott & White
Hospital
and Clinic
How Capacity Planning Helps
You Right-Size Your Investment
Simply put, capacity planning eliminates guess-
work and equips you with the facts you need to
make an informed decision when buying POWER9
hardware. Some IT teams may try to accomplish
this via simple tools like Excel spreadsheets, but
these can be prone to error, especially if a lot of
data is involved. Likewise, it usually doesn’t work
to assume a linear increase in capacity require-
ments; there could be cyclical or seasonal chang-
es or usage spikes due to promotions or short-term
business changes that you need to capture.
that enables you to:
• Avoid overspending or underspending on
new equipment
• Justify the cost of purchases to decision-makers
on the buying team
• Make accurate capacity predictions that
include reasonable buffers
• Identify technology gaps
• Evaluate your full IT environment, spanning
multiple operating systems across on-premises,
cloud and hybrid infrastructure
 The good news is your existing servers contain a
veritable treasure trove of information regarding
actual usage over time. The key is accessing and
interpreting this data to inform your future invest-
ments. This takes the right tools and guidance.
This deep-dive evaluation will help you:
• Analyze historical data for complex CPU,
memory and disk reports in HTML output for one
partition, the whole frame or the entire enterprise

An effective capacity planning assessment takes • Plan and configure upgrades, server
a look at your system’s performance data—which consolidations, LPAR configurations and
could span days, months, or years to display infor- competitive migrations with powerful, what-if
mation graphically across: capacity planning analysis

• CPU utilization • Model or combine workloads from any or all

• Memory utilization servers to any IBM Power Systems server
• Disk I/O utilization
• Network utilization

Without taking the time to accurately analyze

your hardware needs based on real-world data,
you’re flying blind when it comes to making
a major hardware investment.

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 The Risks of Forgoing
Capacity Planning The Risks
Without taking the time to accurately analyze your
hardware needs based on real-world data, you’re
Excess capacity
flying blind when it comes to making a major hard-
ware investment. Ultimately, not having the right
capacity can negatively impact your ability to run
your business the way you need to. Here are com- Service Hidden
mon scenarios and the risks associated with each. outages costs

Having Too Much Capacity

With the tremendous processing capabilities of
POWER9, having excess capacity is possible. If you’re
just guessing what you need and overestimate your
usage, you are tying up valuable dollars in equipment
when you likely need it for other uses. Buying a more
powerful server or more servers than you require will
also lead to higher total cost of ownership (TCO) or hid-
den costs, such as an increase in the electricity needed
to run the equipment. You may also have to purchase
additional software licenses or staff to manage the
excess capacity. Remember that TCO includes not only
hardware, but also software and maintenance.
Not Having Enough Capacity
This risk is often caused by a perceived lack of bud-
get. However, if you can build out the business case
and financials using capacity planning, you’ll be bet-
Bottlenecks
ter off in the long run. Otherwise, your infrastructure
could become your Achilles’ heel. If you fail to imple-
ment the right server capacity, you could experience
service outages or interruptions that can affect your
user community or customers. Another risk is the
possibility of developing internal bottlenecks that
impede efficient project completion or lead to higher
costs than you originally anticipated. Finally, you
could negatively impact your organization’s ability
to carry out important initiatives such as launching a
new product, expanding operations or facilitating a
merger or acquisition.

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 Why Guess When You Can Know for Sure?
Accurate capacity planning is a critical step for any business considering the purchase
of new technology to support their operations. Not only does this exercise give you
the opportunity to consider how your IT team will be involved in and support ongoing
business changes, but it also gives you a clear picture of how your data center has been
running to date.

No doubt it can be difficult to carve out time for your busy team to undertake a capaci-
ty planning project. But the risks of not understanding where you are today and where
you need to be down the road are simply not worth taking for your business. The first
step is to develop a baseline understanding of your current system performance. Once
you’ve collected historical data on the performance status of each LPAR, make it easy
on yourself and bring that information into a capacity planning consultation with
experts who can help you interpret the data and make smart planning decisions.

Next Steps
Before you make an investment in POWER9 or other Power server technology,
here are a few things to consider:

• Do you have old hardware that is no longer supported?

• What operating system releases are supported on the new hardware?
• How can virtualization reduce cost and improve performance?
• Which storage options are best for your environment?
• Which models are best—scale-out or scale-up?
• Should you purchase for growth up front or purchase as needed?
• How does this affect high availability, disaster recovery and backups?

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 Thinking about your answers to these questions will get you headed in the right direction. MPG,
a HelpSystems Company, is a leading expert in this space and we’re ready to support you in your
capacity planning efforts.

Start building your baseline historical performance data today by downloading our free
monitoring tool for IBM i, AIX, VIOS and Linux. Following the easy install on your primary operating
system, our tool will immediately begin collecting data. Our proprietary tools are updated with the
latest POWER9 specs for accurate server sizing and provide access to a number of reports for
interpreting the data to determine your capacity needs.

Don’t have the time or expertise to interpret the data?

Call MPG, a HelpSystems Company, at (800) 328-1000 and our capacity planning
experts will help you navigate this complex process with a data-driven look at how
to approach your technology spend. You’ll come away with the cost justification
information decision-makers such as IT infrastructure managers, IT directors and
CTOs need to move forward with an investment for your business.

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 About MPG, a HelpSystems Company
Acquired by HelpSystems in 2018, Midrange Performance Group, Inc. (MPG) is a recognized industry
expert in capacity planning and performance measurement for midrange and enterprise-class servers.
Dedicated to helping our customers get the most from their IT investment, MPG has assisted
a wide variety of organizations in managing the cost and improving the performance of their
hardware and software systems.

Visit us online:

MPG helpsystems

mpginc.com helpsystems.com