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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Real-Time Control Charts for SEDS

I still analyze different tools that capture computer application abnormalities based on real-time data. In addition to Integrien (now it is a part of VMware's tool called AliveVMand Netuitive I have recently looked at BMC ProActive Net Analytics. I have spoken with BMC SMEs and they showed me a live demo of the tool. I always respected BMC (and espetialy BGS) as actually the inventor of this approach (MASF) and long ago I used to analyze statistical exceptions using BMC Visualizer and BMC Perceive (BTW I have published in my papers a few examples how I did that) . Now they have another and very good tool for the same purpose (http://documents.bmc.com/products/documents/49/13/84913/84913.pdf)

Watching the live presentation I got a positive impression of how that works for complex applications and transactions correlating different abnormal events with possibility to reduce false positives situations. Interesting that the combination of dynamic and static thresholds are used there to generate alarms. Just like SEDS does - static one to capture hot issues (run-aways and leaks) and statistical ones for early warnings.

Now I have a very difficult task to choose from those three products (plus SEDS) to recommend to my management...

Speaking about SEDS, I have decided to play with near-real time data to see how difficult would be to redesign SEDS making it works more similar with mentioned above modern and serious tools. Fortunately SEDS is just a bunch of SAS Marcos with parameters which helped me to make the adjustment needed to include today's data. And surprisingly that was pretty easy task! I spent only a couple days to developed a "real-time SEDS" prototype. Currently what it only does is building every hour the real-time Control Charts that can be seen at the beginning of this post.

I plan to include some details about real-time Control Charts to my upcoming CMG'09 Workshop.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Performance and Capacity Analyst Bookshelf

0. PERSONAL: Alex Podelko's Capacity/Performance links collection. - Richest in the Internet!

1. ON-LINE
- Guerrilla Capacity Planning by Neil J. Gunther, M.Sc., Ph.D. and Guerrilla Capacity Planning PART II: Weapons of Mass Instruction by Neil J. Gunther

- Ray Wicks: Getting Started in z/OS Capacity Planning
Part2 Getting Started in z/OS Capacity Planning
Part3 Getting Started in z/OS Capacity Planning
Part4 Getting Started in z/OS Capacity Planning
Part5 Getting Started in z/OS Capacity Planning

2. TO BUY
- John Allspaw:The Art of Capacity Planning ...
- The Performance and Capacity Analyst Bookshelf by Rick Ralston and Dan Schwarz

Monday, July 6, 2009

My CMG’09 Sunday Workshop

(2010 UPDATE: based on the workshop the CMG'10 paper is written and will be published in the CMG conference - http://itrubin.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-cmg10-presentation-it-control-charts.html) 

My workshop entitled
"Power of Control Charts: How to Read, How to Build, How to Use
has been accepted for the CMG’09 Sunday Workshop program to be held at the Gaylord Texan in Dallas, Texas, December 6, 2009 (http://cmg.org/conference/cmg2009/)

The workshop proposal is following:

One of the most powerful ways to visualize computer system behavior is the Control Chart. Originally used in Mechanical Engineering, it has become one of the main Six Sigma tools to optimize business processes, and after some adjustments it is used in IT Capacity Management area especially in “behavior learning” products.

During the workshop the following topics will be discussed: What is the Control Chart? Where the Control Chart is used: review of some systems performance tools that use it. Control chart types: MASF charts vs. SPC. Gallery of already published charts in CMG papers plus some new charts with explanations on how to read them. How to build a Control Chart: using Excel for interactive analysis and R to do it automatically. The session includes a live demonstration of Excel to build different types of control charts against real performance data. Attendees will be provided CDs with the data in spreadsheets and will build Control Charts themselves even with their own data. Finally, they will be able to run an R-script to build a Control Chart based on input CSV data.

This workshop is based on series of CMG papers published by the author. The prototype of the workshop was presented twice this year in Southern CMG meetings in VA and NC.

The presentation slides are already published here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Igor_Trubin/publication/259486489_TrubinCMG2009_IT_ControlCharts_SCMG_Fall/data/59c14e9e0f7e9b21a82657b6/CMG2009-Workshop-Trubin.pptx 

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Capacity Management Found in Translation

I have just created my 2nd blog to share my technical ideas and thoughts in Russian. If you can read Russian please visit http://www.ukor.blogspot.com/.

The name of my new blog is "Управление Вычислительной Мощностью" which simply means “Capacity Management”. That term translation I have recently found in a Russian article (click here to read) which was published in 2008 by Enterprise Systems and Software Laboratory, HP Laboratories Palo Alto. I was so glad that I had finally figured out how “Capacity Management” is said in Russian! The past 10 years doing Capacity Management I always had a problem explaining to my Russian friends and relatives what my occupation was! Now I know and that fact inspired me to start my new blog for Russian readers.

Another reason is the 20th anniversary of my 1st program which I wrote and sold. That was the graphical editor with some CAD features I wrote using FORTRAN for PC with PDP type of processor (DVK-3). The name of that program was UKOR (In Russian that means “REPROOF”). That’s why the link to my new blog is “ http://www.UKOR.blogspot.com/ “!