Abstract:

Since in capacity planning activities the available information with respect to workload and system configuration is often rather coarse we propose a technique which is based on a “macroscopic” (high level) view. Based on the analysis of utilization data collected from mainframe monitoring we introduce a heuristic algorithm for the allocation of logical partitions (LPARs) to multiprocessors. Subsequently queuing theoretic formulas for M/M/m- and G/G/m-models can be used to check to which extent a proposed LPAR allocation will fulfil prespecified service levels. The approach is illustrated by data taken from real world scenarios.