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Good decision making requires timely and insightful information. Key to making
informed decisions along with implementing strategies is having insight into IT resource
usage and the services being delivered. Information about what IT resources exist, how
they are being used, and the level of service being delivered is essential to identifying
areas of improvement to boost productivity, raise efficiency, and reduce costs. It is
important to identify metrics and techniques that enable timely and informed decisions to
boost efficiency in the most applicable manner to meet IT service requirements.
A common focus, particularly for environments looking to use virtualization for server
consolidation, is server utilization. Server utilization does provide a partial picture;
however, it is important to look also at performance and availability for additional insight
into how a server is running. For example, a server may operate at a given low utilization
rate to meet application service-level response time or performance requirements. For
networks, including switches, routers, bridges, gateways, and other specialized
appliances, several metrics may be considered, including usage or utilization;
performance in terms of number of frames, packets, IOPS, or bandwidth per second; and
latency, errors, or queues indicating network congestion or bottlenecks.
It is important to avoid trying to do too much with a single or limited metric that
compares too many different facets of resource usage. For example, simply comparing all
IT equipment from an inactive, idle perspective does not reflect productivity and energy
efficiency for doing useful work. Likewise, not considering low-power modes ignores
energy-saving opportunities during low-activity periods. Focusing only on storage or
server utilization or capacity per given footprint does not tell how much useful work can
be done in that footprint per unit of energy at a given cost and service delivery level.
Virtual data centers require physical resources to function efficiently and in a green or
environmentally friendly manner. Thus it is vital to understand the value of resource
performance, availability, capacity, and energy usage to deliver various IT services.
Understanding the relationship between different resources and how they are used is
important to gauge improvement and productivity as well as data center efficiency. For
example, while the cost per raw terabyte may seem relatively inexpensive, the cost for
I/O response time performance needs to be considered for active data.
http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/marchapril03/technicalcorner/10041p2.aspx
6. http://www.mathematik.uni-trier.de/tf/98_16.ps
7.