Capacity management
Summarize
Summary of Capacity management
Capacity management in Telecommunications Network Inventory enables ServiceNow customers to calculate and manage the capacity of physical network entities such as ports, slots, and racks. This functionality helps customers plan, monitor, and optimize network resources to meet current and future demands efficiently by providing accurate capacity metrics.
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Key Features
- Automated Capacity Calculation: When creating or modifying configuration items (CIs), the system automatically calculates available, occupied, and maximum capacity based on predefined functions and definitions, ensuring up-to-date capacity information.
- Capacity Metrics: Capacity is reported through metrics showing maximum, occupied, available, and usage percentages for network assets, which supports effective resource management and accurate network design adjustments.
- Customizable Capacity Definitions: Customers can configure capacity functions, definitions, and metrics tailored to specific CI types, enabling precise capacity management aligned with their network architecture.
- Capacity Management Workflow: The system leverages function, definition, and metric tables to calculate capacity. Capacity recalculations are triggered automatically upon design changes or can be manually initiated via the inventory record interface.
- Operational Data Integration for Datacenters: The application supports ingesting high-volume operational data (thermal, power, usage) from external systems like Equinix via REST APIs into the ServiceNow instance (ClothoDB). This data is processed daily to update capacity metrics and trigger alerts or incidents as needed.
- Time Series Metrics and Visualization: Customers can leverage time series metrics to analyze datacenter operational data and visualize health overlays on floor maps, facilitating proactive infrastructure management.
Key Outcomes
- Improved Capacity Planning: Automated, accurate capacity calculations help ensure network designs consider available resources, minimizing over-provisioning or shortages.
- Real-Time Resource Monitoring: Continuous updates on capacity metrics allow customers to monitor resource usage and availability effectively.
- Enhanced Operational Awareness: Integration of operational data provides insight into datacenter health, helping customers take timely corrective actions.
- Custom Flexibility: Ability to tailor capacity calculations to specific network elements supports diverse and complex telecommunications environments.
Capacity management in Telecommunications Network Inventory enables you to calculate the capacity of physical entities in your network. By effectively managing the capacity, you can plan, monitor, and optimize the resources to make sure that the network can meet your current and future demands efficiently.
Introduction to capacity management
The capacity management in Telecommunications Network Inventory uses functions and definitions to calculate and report the capacity of your network assets. The capacity metric estimates the maximum, occupied, and available network resources such as ports, slots, or racks in a telecommunication network. You can use this metric result to report the capacity of a network asset that can be used for future expansion of the network design.
Capacity calculation use cases
When you create a configuration item (CI) using the design and assign function, the system automatically calculates the available capacity of the associated CIs. The Telecommunications Network Inventory application uses predefined definitions and functions to calculate the capacity. So, whenever there’s a modification in the current design, the system automatically triggers the capacity calculation, and updates the metrics. The metric shows estimated maximum, occupied, available, and usage values for an entity. This approach makes sure that resource consumption is effectively managed. Also, this calculation improves the accuracy of the design and assign function.
For example, when you add a new piece of equipment to a rack, it's important to determine the available racks within the equipment holder. When you create an equipment record, the predefined capacity definition runs, and the metric automatically updates the rack availability data. The capacity definition includes functions that determine the maximum and occupied racks. Subsequently, it calculates the difference between the maximum and occupied racks. For instance, if the maximum number of racks is 10 and the occupied racks are 7, there are 3 available racks. If the maximum number of racks are 10 and the occupied racks are 10, the available rack count is 0, which indicates no racks are available. Then the system consolidates the result in the capacity metric. This process provides you with the accurate capacity and availability information of the racks.
You can customize the capacity calculation for each type of Configuration Item (CI). This feature enables you to create and configure the function, definition, and metric to calculate the capacity. To learn more about configuring the capacity function and creating the metric, see Configuring capacity management.
Capacity management workflow
Capacity management uses function, definition, and metric tables to calculate and report the capacity. In the Telecommunications Network Inventory application, the system runs the capacity function and aggregates the results into the capacity metric table. It creates an available metric for capacity and a usage metric where the percentage value of available capacity is stored. Whenever a design change is happened, the system triggers an API to calculate the capacity using predefined functions and definitions. You can also manually calculate the capacity by selecting the Calculate capacity button in the inventory record.
To learn more about capacity function, definition, and metric, see Configuring capacity management.
Operational data collection of a datacenter
A datacenter generates a high volume of operational data for thermal, power, and usage readings. The ServiceNow instance can store and process the internal or external data for further analysis and reporting. Equinix (an external
system) provides this data feed in the form of REST APIs. You then store the data in clothoDB through the /api/sn_ni_adv/dcim/feed/{vendorname} endpoint. The system runs TNI Aggregate Metric Data
scheduled job once a day to update any capacity metric records on ClothoDB that haven't been updated in the last 24 hours. Also when the trigger condition is met, then the system creates an alert or incident. Use the time series
metrics to query the operational data and get an overlay on your datacenters floor map with this data. So you can view the health of the floor and take the necessary actions. To learn more about the time series metrics, see Time series metrics for datacenter.
You can also manually feed the operational data from your instance to clothoDB. To learn more, see Collect operational values for datacenter.