| | |  | Manager's Guides to Computing | Home » » » Guerrilla Capacity Planning: A Tactical Approach to Planning for Highly Scalable Applications and Services | | | | | | | Description: | | Under today’s shortened fiscal horizons and contracted time-to-market schedules, traditional approaches to capacity planning are seen by management as inflating production schedules. In the face of relentless pressure to get things done faster, this book facilitates rapid forecasting of capacity requirements, based on opportunistic use of available performance data and tools so that management insight is expanded but production schedules are not. The book introduces such concepts as an iterative cycle of improvement called "The Wheel of Capacity Planning," and Virtual Load Testing, which provides a highly cost-effective method for assessing application scalability. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Neil J. Gunther | | Hardcover:
| 273 pages | | Publisher:
| Springer | | Publication Date:
| December 19, 2006 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 3540261389 | | Product Width:
| 1.56 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 2.37 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.01 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.45 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.22 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.79 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.54 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 6 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 A useful introduction to the scalability of parallel computingSep 12, 2010
By Photo/Video Gearhead
Neil Gunther has undertaken an important work, that of teaching to IT professionals the basics of measuring and modeling the scalability of parallel computer systems. The model that he develops in his book is a useful starting point; however, this model fails to provide a sufficiently general basis for modeling the behavior of the wide variety of extant parallel computer systems.
The "universal scalability model" that he describes in section 4.4, and for which he provides figure 4.8 and equation 4.31, extends Amdahl's Law via the addition of a "coherency" term that models effects such as data exchange between parallel processes. And although Gunther suggests that this coherency term ought to grow linearly with the number of parallel processes, and hence should appear as a quadratic term in equation 4.31, this coherency term depends on the specific communication architecture of the computer system and can grow non-linearly.
For example, in a distributed memory architecture such as a cluster of compute nodes, coherency effects may grow linearly with the number of processors due to communication between the compute nodes. However, in a shared memory architecture, coherency effects may grow by the logarithm of the number of processors because one processor may not communicate directly with all other processors. Instead, one processor may send information to two other processors, and each of those two processors may send information to two more processors, and so forth. Therefore, in order to model the communication that occurs in a shared memory architecture, the quadratic n(n-1) coherency term in equation 4.31 should be replaced by a n*log(n) term.
In addition to the above example, I have obtained performance data for other parallel computer systems for which the universal scalability model fails to model adequately the scalability for a variety of different reasons. Thus, although Gunther's book is a useful introduction to the subject of measuring and modeling the behavior of parallel computer architectures, his universal scalability model should not be considered to be universal. Instead, that model is a useful starting point for modeling the behavior of a parallel computer architecture.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Who does this better?Mar 15, 2007
By Ted C
"Ted"
I've read the other reviews and they seem to ignore the "Guerrilla" concept. The fact that scientific analysis is ignored and decisions made on perceived knowledge in most companies for me is the key to the book. Excel is a great way to get the performance point across even with precision errors. Getting management buy in is 99% of the process. GCP makes that argument simple. Read this book and get the word out. Performance is not linear!
Great coverage of Capacity Planning and Performance ManagementAug 24, 2008
By WIETZE A. DEVRIES
"Wi7ard"
Very readable coverage of Capacity Planning and Performance Management. Doesn't presume any previous knowledge, but doesn't talk down either. Several good chapters talking about queueing theory.
A great practical handbook.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Enlightening, however ...Mar 11, 2007
By Canberra CCIE
First of all, this book was worth the money I spent on it. I came away from reading this book with a clear understanding of the differences between speed and scale, and with a system for modelling the scalability of systems in general.
However... really all of this value was in the first quarter of the book. I read on and read on looking for further conceptual gems but they weren't to be found.
I guess that books are "meant" to be at least a particular length, but this one could have been much shorter and more concise.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A Solid WorkDec 19, 2006
By Richard Masters
Alright I finally got the book! As promised a proper review.
This is the third Gunther text I have purchased. I believe his work is unique and is filled with interesting ideas. Some of the ideas he takes from his previous works but overall it is a nice compliment to his current bibliography.
If you are interested in performance tuning and capacity planning this is a good purchase. I highly recommend it. Plus I love the little "Guerilla Manual" that is included in the back sleeve of the work.
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