ACE Capacity Planning Practices

[Michael Mertens]

We have 6 pair of 4710 ACEs in FT mode, with approximately 38 contexts. We also have ANM 5.2. We are in a long-term growth plan and are certainly executing on that plan. I'm attempting to come up with some capacity planning methods/reporting so I can do some trending and know when to increase licenses, add interfaces to port-channels, add hardware, etc. BEFORE it becomes a problem, and for budgeting purposes.

Right now, I'm simply thinking of simply doing a "show resource usage" daily or every couple days, to get a snapshot of peak values and denied resources, noting in a spreadsheet, and then zeroing out those statistics. Obviously, this is pretty painful from a labor stand-point and I don't know if someone has a better method. While I'm not too concerned if some resources are denied every now-and-then, but I need to make sure it's not constant or a growing trend.

Any input on capacity planning/resource planning, monitoring and reporting for the ACE 4710's/ANM would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!               

[Kanwaljeet Singh]

Hi Michael,

Please see the attached document for ACE monitoring.

Regarding the capacity planning, you need to take a decision based on the results you get from monitoring different values.

Of course you need to ensure that resources are allocated correctly. You can also see denied counters if the resources are not allocated properly. At the same time you need to ensure that configuration is to the point and device is not doing anything which it shouldn't or is not needed in your network or is not needed for your requirement.

You should only enable things which you need and meet your requirment.

Regards,

Kanwal