June, 2007
by Rick Ralston, Managing Editor
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Mike Salsburg Ph.D.continues his presentations on Virtualization with What's All the Fuss About I/O Virtualization? So, what's behind this increase of CPU utilization for I/O operations? This month's article will dig deeper into this interesting issue. Much of the information has been synthesized from an article by Intel called: "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O."
Rick Isom talks about Using Principal Component Analysis to Analyze Data and Generate Forecasts. Many corporations have customers spread across the entire country. Analyzing and forecasting large and complex corporate applications containing vast amounts of data present an ongoing challenge for a capacity planning group. For example, analysts of large and complex DB2 applications must simultaneously track several user access factors that affect CPU usage in different but significant ways. For instance, both the type and time of user access can be highly unpredictable and, therefore, erratically impact the application's CPU usage.
Peter Baxter continues with part 2 of Measurement for Maturity and Process Improvement. Following on from part one of the paper, which ended by describing the capabilities that a capable measurement process should provide, this part provides recommendations for selecting a performance measurement tool. This guidance includes characteristics, features and capabilities your organization will want to seek out when looking for software to automate its CMMI Measurement and Analysis process.
As a prelude to UKCMG, Adrian Johnson presents Capacity Utilisation - Asking the Questions. "We won't really know how the system performs until it is out there in production" - once upon a time, this was considered an acceptable reason to not take performance and capacity seriously prior to the release of a new application. Servers were often regarded as commodity items, at least in comparison to mainframe technologies, and it was simply easier if each new project brought in its own set of machines. The team that had to build the system were rarely the same people who had to manage it in production, and the explosive growth in the number of machines often went unchecked for far too long.
Dave Thorn reviews the Philadelphia CMG meeting on May 18.
Ellen Friedman reviews the New York City CMG meeting on June 1.
Dr Bernie Domanski, the CMG'07 General Chair, has another video about CMG'07. Please, watch the video and get involved in CMG'07.
Kathy Steffens, the CMG'07 Program Chair, has brief program update and request for volunteers.
We are always interested in receiving your comments, suggestions, and submitted articles. Help us make MeasureIT even better in 2007.
This issue was made possible through the hard work and dedication of the MeasureIT volunteer staff, Dr. Neil Gunther's last minute editor efforts, and the contributions of willing authors.
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