* A process IT organizations can use to get better at application performance management
The last several newsletters have discussed both the need and some of the challenges associated with establishing SLAs for a company’s key applications and the components of the IT infrastructure that support those applications. This newsletter will continue that conversation and will make the readers aware of where they can get additional information on this important topic.
Once the IT organization has identified the handful of critical business applications, they must identify the key components of the IT infrastructure. The phrase ‘key components of the IT infrastructure’ sounds vague. It is not. The key components of the IT infrastructure are those specific infrastructure components (e.g., WAN links, servers) that support the company’s critical applications. These are the key components because if one of these components is either not available or not performing well, one or more of the company’s critical business applications is likely to be impacted. Conversely, if some other WAN link or server is either not available or is not performing well, it has little or no impact on the company’s critical business applications.
Once the IT organization has identified the key components of the IT infrastructure, they must quantify how the performance of those key components affects the performance of the company’s critical business applications. For example, assume that the IT organization has established an SLA for one of the company’s critical applications and the SLA states that the application response time will not exceed 5 seconds. Then the IT organization needs to understand how WAN delay impacts application response time. The good news is there are a number of vendors (i.e., Shunra, Opnet) that provide tools that enable the IT organization to quantify this impact. Let’s assume as part of testing the application, the IT organization determines that as long at the round trip WAN delay is less than 80 ms, the application response time is acceptable.
Further assume the testing reveals that once the round trip WAN delay gets above 80 ms, the application response time degrades rapidly. This knowledge, combined with the appropriate management tools and processes enables the IT organization to monitor those WAN links to identify when the WAN delay is approaching 80 ms. So when the round trip WAN delay approaches 80 ms, the IT organization can take appropriate action, such as increasing the capacity of one or more WAN links.
The 2009 edition of the Application Delivery Handbook is currently available free of charge here. That handbook contains a detailed description of a process IT organizations can use to get better at application performance management.
