You have to understand Hardware,too

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You have to understand Hardware,too

Kamal Wickramanayake

For many software architects, hardware capacity planning are a topic that lies beyond their comfort zone, yet it remains an Important part of the architect ' s job. There is a number of reasons why software architects often fail to properly consider hardware, but they mostly has to do With a lack of understanding and unclear requirements.
The primary reason we neglect hardware considerations is the We be focused on software and tend to ignore hardware deman Ds. In addition, we is naturally isolated from hardware by high-level languages and software frameworks.
Unclear requirements is also a factor, as they may change or could be poorly understood. As the architecture evolves, hardware considerations would also change. In addition, our clients is not understand or is able to predict the size of their own user base or system usage dynamics . Finally, hardware is constantly evolving. What we knew about hardware in the past does not apply today.
Without hardware expertise, predicting hardware configurations for systems to being developed is highly error prone. To compensate, some software architects use large safety factors. Such safety factors is generally not based on objective assessments or founded in any methodology. In the most of the cases, this leads to excessive infrastructure capacities that would not be utilized even in periods of peak Demand. As a result, clients ' money was wasted on more hardware than a system would ever need.
The best defense against poor hardware planning are to work closely with an infrastructure architect. Infrastructure Architects, unlike software architects,
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?? is specialists in hardware capacity planning, and they should is a part of your team. However, not every software architect have the luxury of working with an infrastructure architect. In such cases there is some things a software architect can do-mitigate errors when planning for hardware.
Drawing on your own past experience can help. You ' ve implemented systems in the past, so you have some knowledge of hardware capacity Planning-even if it is an Afterth Ought at the time. You can also discuss the topic with your client and convince them to set aside funds for hardware capacity planning. Budgeting for capacity planning can is much more cost effective than buy-ing more hardware than you need. In this case, horizontal scalability are the key-adding hardware as needed rather than overbuying in the beginning. To make a horizontal strategy work, software architects need to constantly measure capacity and isolate software component S to execute in performance-predictable environments.
Hardware capacity planning is as important as software architecture, and it needs to being given a First-order priority Wheth Er you has an infrastructure architect in hand or not. Just as an architect are responsible for establishing the links between business demands and a software solution, she is re Sponsible for envisioning the links between hardware and software.
Kamal Wickramanayake is a IT and software architect who lives in Sri Lanka. He is togaf-certified by the Open Group.
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You have to understand Hardware,too