Capacity Management is the discipline that ensures IT infrastructure is provided at the right time in the right volume at the right price, and ensuring that IT is used in the most efficient manner.
This involves input from many areas of the business to identify what services are (or will be) required, what IT infrastructure is required to support these services, what level of Contingency will be needed, and what the cost of this infrastructure will be.
These are inputs into the following Capacity Management processes:
From these processes come the results of capacity management, hese being the capacity plan itself, forecasts, tuning data and Service Level Management guidelines.
Capacity management is a function of IT operations that provides guidance on how to plan, justify, and manage appropriate levels of resources needed for a given solution. Improper planning for capacity can lead to wasted resources resulting in unnecessary cost, or lack of resources resulting in poor performance or the unavailability of an IT service.
Capacity management also provides input to procedures necessary for planning, implementing, and operating an efficient IT service. There is a need to monitor and interpret service capacity levels and IT component performance in order to have the capacity data essential for the planning and design of new systems, services, and business solutions. Capacity management interrelates with availability management and is key to establishing the optimal capacity for a new service or component or to changing an existing service or component. Capacity management also provides the performance and capacity planning feedback that is necessary when producing a contingency plan for business continuity.
Capacity management is one of the most important quantitative aspects of an IT service. Since there is both a business and end-user focus to capacity management, once implemented this process delivers the following primary benefits:
Other benefits include:
