DB2 physical database design for the OLTP environment: scale adjustment and capacity management

Database scale and capacity planning includes estimation of system resources required to meet enterprise-level business objectives. Good capacity planning not only focuses on meeting current needs, but also adjusts the system size for future needs, so that the database infrastructure can be seamlessly expanded based on changes in business needs. In addition, a good plan will take into account workload changes

Database scale and capacity planning includes estimation of system resources required to meet enterprise-level business objectives. Good capacity planning not only focuses on meeting current needs, but also adjusts the system size for future needs, so that the database infrastructure can be seamlessly expanded based on changes in business needs. In addition, a good plan will take into account workload changes

The scale and capacity planning includes estimation of system resources required to meet enterprise-level business goals. Good capacity planning not only focuses on meeting current needs, but also adjusts the system size for future needs, so that the infrastructure can be seamlessly expanded based on changes in business needs. In addition, a good plan will take into account workload changes.

The main goal of capacity planning is to determine the requirements of system resources, design a balanced system, and optimize resources to achieve the best performance and throughput to meet business needs. When we discuss database scale adjustment and capacity management, DB2 database terms include hardware infrastructure, I/O subsystem, and the operating systems required to host and support one or more DB2 instances and one or more databases. Capacity planning can help you in the following aspects:

Prepare a plan for a group of system resources or upgrades required for deployment at an early stage of the cycle. This Plan helps you budget your expenses in advance.
 Plans and designs database systems for future business needs before reaching performance thresholds and bottlenecks.

In the event of a crisis, additional resources, manpower and other resources are provided. This leads to more expensive solutions and lower operational efficiency. Proactively manage your system requirements to minimize major accidents and business interruptions. For a 24x7 mission-critical business, any downtime will directly affect revenue, sales, customer satisfaction, and business reputation.

Estimate System Resources and design a balanced system

To estimate the resource consumption of a workload and estimate the capacity that can meet the business needs, the best way is to benchmark the workload in the quality assurance or testing environment. Running a new benchmark is a time-consuming operation. This operation requires human resources, system settings, management support, and commitment from various teams. Alternatively, you can use past data as the benchmark test result or workload resource consumption to estimate the resource requirements for the current deployment. However, the results will not be as accurate as the new benchmark test. A comprehensive capacity planning process includes all of the following steps:

1. Collect business objectives, service level requirements, and stakeholder feedback.
2. determine the current system resource capacity, such as the number of CPUs, LPAR, memory per LPAR or system, I/O performance characteristics, storage devices, available space and network bandwidth.
3. Investigate the nature of a workload, for example, when the most resources are used for a workload.
4. Estimate the workload growth rate and resource consumption during peak hours as the business grows.
5. Use the data collected from the previous steps to estimate system requirements and adjust the scale. Run the workload on a non-production system, verify the estimated scale and accurately plan the required capacity.
6. Optimize the system and database as needed based on the indicators collected from the test.
7. Prepare a capacity planning plan and verify it. Revise the scale and proposal and repeat the previous steps as needed.
8. All stakeholders reach consensus on the Capacity Planning Plan and approve it.
9. Implement the approved capacity plan.
10. Monitor your system performance and revise your capacity plan as your business and workload changes.

The workflow of the Capacity Planning step described in the previous section is displayed:

Figure 5. Process for estimating system resources and designing a balanced system

When you set a target for the throughput and response time of a business application, you must estimate and analyze all aspects of system resources and workload so that they can meet service level requirements.