Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   Capacity Management
  •   Monitor, Analyze, and Report Capacity Usage

Details

IBM® Tivoli® Performance Analyzer (ITPA) is a seamless extension to IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM). It extends ITM by adding targeted performance and capacity management capabilities.

ITM itself provides extensive data collection capabilities enabling it to monitor IT performance and availability for system, application and user experience standpoints. Through the Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW), ITM enables the integration of historical, near-term and real-time information in a single, customizable user interface.

ITPA leverages the data collected by ITM and applies performance and capacity analytics to produce targeted reports. A key analytic provided by ITPA is predictive trending.

ITPA forecasts future values of key metrics using on a flexible and transparent trending module which provides trend direction and strength indicators to enable the clear understanding of future usage. The Trending Analytic provides two types of forecast output.

• Firstly it provides Time to Capacity information details how long key resources have until they run out of capacity. This enables users to prioritize their responses to based on how long a resource has until it reaches capacity.
• Secondly it provides Projected Usage at key points in the future (by default 7 days, 30 days and 90 days). This enables the proactive management of resources tied to key planning horizons ensuring that additional capacity can added in a timely manner.

The Forecast analytics generated by ITPA can be treated just like any other ITM metric. For example they can be used in reporting, combined into status objects and used to create events and situations. Using trending information in reports enables users to answer questions like:

• How long have I got until I run out of capacity?
• Will I have enough capacity to get me through next week
• What will next Monday look like?
• What resources will I have to upgrade in 90 days time?

Figure 1: Forecast Reports in IBM Tivoli Performance Analyzer

For More Information

For more information about this tool, click on the link for this tool at the top of this page.