Cloud Capacity Planning and Management

Cloud computing promises to completely revolutionize the capacity planning and management of resources. Elasticity and economy of scale are the elements that differentiate it from traditional computing paradigms because they allow current demand to be matched as closely as possible at each point in time and consequently minimize costs due to resource allocation. This chapter presents the essentials of cloud capacity planning and management. A capacity planning and management strategy can be as simple as a workload threshold-based increase or reduction in resources or may involve the combination of several theoretical approaches to ensure not only the quality of service required for dealing with a given workload but also to minimize other criteria such as the cost related to the allocation of resources. The chapter also provides some discussion regarding the relationship between capacity management and the lifecycle of resources. On one hand, cloud computing enables on-demand scaling, which allows the punctual application of capacity planning for short time windows in a reactive manner. On the other hand, the granularity of billing models (hourly, daily, and so forth) and the price difference between on-demand and early resource reservation require a certain level of proactiveness. Hence, more sophisticated capacity management approaches may rely on hybrid strategies to improve cost-effectiveness in the long term and to be capable of reacting to unanticipated demand variations in the short term.