Capacity Management is a process used to manage information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT capacity meets current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. One common interpretation of Capacity Management is described in the ITIL

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library , is a set of good practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form , ITIL is published in a series of five core publications, each of which covers an ITSM lifecycle stage...

 framework. ITIL version 3 views capacity management as comprising three sub-processes: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management (known as resource capacity management in ITIL version 2).

As the usage of IT Services change and functionality evolves, the amount of processing power, memory etc also changes. If it is possible to understand the demands being made currently, and how they will change over time, this approach proposes that planning for IT Service growth becomes easier and less reactive. If there are spikes in, for example, processing power at a particular time of the day, it proposes analyzing what is happening at that time and make changes to maximize the existing infrastructure, for example, tune the application, or move a batch cycle to a quieter period.

These activities are intended to optimize performance and efficiency, and to plan for and justify financial investments. Capacity management is concerned with:

• Monitoring the performance and throughput or load on a server, server farm, or property
• Performance analysis
  Performance analysis
  In software engineering, profiling is a form of dynamic program analysis that measures, for example, the usage of memory, the usage of particular instructions, or frequency and duration of function calls...
  
   of measurement data, including analysis of the impact of new releases on capacity
• Performance tuning
  Performance tuning
  Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. This is typically a computer application, but the same methods can be applied to economic markets, bureaucracies or other complex systems. The motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be real or anticipated....
  
   of activities to ensure the most efficient use of existing infrastructure
• Understanding the demands on the Service and future plans for workload growth (or shrinkage)
• Influences on demand for computing resources
  Resource (computer science)
  A resource, or system resource, is any physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. Every device connected to a computer system is a resource. Every internal system component is a resource...
  
  
• Capacity planning
  Capacity planning
  Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
  
   – developing a plan for the Service

Capacity management interacts with the discipline of Performance Engineering

Performance Engineering

Performance engineering within systems engineering, encompasses the set of roles, skills, activities, practices, tools, and deliverables applied at every phase of the Systems Development Life Cycle which ensures that a solution will be designed, implemented, and operationally supported to meet the...

, both during the requirements and design activities of building a system, and when using performance monitoring as an input for managing capacity of deployed systems.

See also

• Application Performance Management
  Application Performance Management
  Application performance management, or APM, refers to the discipline within systems management that focuses on monitoring and managing the performance and service availability of software applications....
  
  
• Capacity planning
  Capacity planning
  Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
  
  
• Computer Measurement Group
  Computer Measurement Group
  The Computer Measurement Group , founded in 1974, is a worldwide non-profit organization of data processing professionals whose work involves measuring and managing the performance of computing systems...
  
   (CMG)
• Network performance management
  Network performance management
  - Factors affecting network performance :Not all networks are the same. As data is broken into component parts for transmission, several factors can affect their delivery....
  
  
• Performance analysis
  Performance analysis
  In software engineering, profiling is a form of dynamic program analysis that measures, for example, the usage of memory, the usage of particular instructions, or frequency and duration of function calls...
  
  
• Performance tuning
  Performance tuning
  Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. This is typically a computer application, but the same methods can be applied to economic markets, bureaucracies or other complex systems. The motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be real or anticipated....
  
  
• ITIL
  Itil
  Itil may mean:*Atil or Itil, the ancient capital of Khazaria*Itil , also Idel, Atil, Atal, the ancient and modern Turkic name of the river Volga.ITIL can stand for:*Information Technology Infrastructure Library...