Collecting data

Data collection is the first step in capacity optimization. Effective and timely data collection provides the information to achieve the capacity management goals, such as capacity visibility, risk mitigation, and resource optimization. It ensures that the IT services and infrastructure are able to deliver the agreed service levels in a cost-effective and timely manner.

BMC Helix Continuous Optimization provides tools to collect data from various third-party data sources and operating systems. Depending on the criticality of services and applications, data collection frequency and granularity changes. For most services and applications, daily or hourly data collection is sufficient. For business-critical services and applications, data collection frequency can be as frequent as one second.

You can visualize and analyze the collected data in the capacity views. You can also perform advanced analysis on the data by creating analysis and models in the Workspace.

Methods of data collection

To support the BMC Helix Continuous Optimization use cases, use Connectors or ETLs and Continuous Optimization Agents as data collection methods.

The following diagram displays the cloud and on-premises components that are used for data collection. Some components are mandatory while others are optional depending on the method that you use for data collection from your on-premises environment.

For more information, see Architecture. 

Data collection for business services, applications, and service pools

To manage and analyze the capacity at a business service level, the IT resources that support business services and underlying applications are grouped and analyzed together. You can also analyze the capacity at a service pool level to better plan your infrastructure needs. In such scenarios, it is important to collect data that can be collated and treated as a collective set. 

For information about the tasks to be performed to collect data for business services, applications, and service pools, see Collecting-data-for-business-services-applications-and-service-pools.