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Capacity models: - System Center User Group Belgium

Capacity models:

Capacity models defines the performance characteristics of a specific application and its components and is stored within Capacity Planner. Capacity Planner uses these performance characteristics to simulate the performance of a deployed system.


At the moment only exchange 2007 is supported. Later on there will be also Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 models.


The models are based on System Architectural Models (*.SAM) .  System architecture model consists of the following information:

  • Topology: Site locations, types of networks, network components, and network characteristics (bandwidth, latency)
  • Hardware: Server distribution and characteristics, server and network mapping
  • Software: Server role and service mapping, file and storage device mapping
  • Usage profiles: Site usage and client usage

Application Model Technology Review

Application models stored in Capacity Planner consist of the following:

  • A list of transactions.   A transaction is a single instance of activity or work, as perceived by a user of Exchange Server.
  • A list of application components.   Application components are discrete parts of an application. For example, the mailbox store is an Exchange Server application component.
  • A list of workload parameters.   Workload parameters are values that are used by a capacity model as part of an action (for example, how large an e-mail message to send through a network interface), part of a transaction (for example, how frequently this transaction occurs relative to other transactions), or part of the overall simulation (for example, how many transactions to send). You provide the values for workload parameters in the Model Wizard and the Model Editor.


Hardware Limitations in Capacity Planner Application Models

The hardware modeling limitations for Capacity Planner application models are described in the following table.

  • Memory Capacity Planner does not actively model memory requirements. Memory requirement recommendations in Capacity Planner are based on best-practice advice for each application model.
  • Disks Capacity Planner requires single-disk configurations to have write caching disabled. If write caching is enabled on single disks in a test environment, simulation results that are obtained from Capacity Planner do not correspond to the actual test results.
  • CPUs As many as eight processors per server and two cores (dual core) per processor can be modeled.
  • Switches and routers Performance is not modeled, although visual indicators for these items are included in the capacity model, appearing in the Model Editor.
  • Firewalls  are not modeled. Capacity Planner models only required infrastructure that affects performance.
    Client computers Overall performance of client computers is not modeled, although network traffic to and from clients is modeled.
  • LANs Only packet-switched Ethernet networks are modeled. All network connections are full duplex.

 

Greetz,Alkin
Published 02 december 2007 12:33 by alkin

Comments

# Capacity Planner said on 01 maart, 2008 10:07

Capacity models defines the performance characteristics of a specific application and its components