Performance Tuning for Content Manager

Chapter 4. Planning for performance 89

available to IBM representatives through TechLine. Your IBM representative can

access it from this Web site:

http://w3.ibm.com/support/americas/techline/sizewise.html

Sizing should not be done in a vacuum. You need to analyze the environment

before and after any sizing exercise to ensure that the results match the

real-world environment for which you are planning.

Goal of the sizing exercise

With a data model that properly represents business data and processes, and an

understanding of the volume of documents in these processes, you can

effectively size the system. The ultimate goal of the sizing exercise is to estimate:

 Storage requirements for the objects on disk, optical, or other media

 Disk requirements for the databases, prerequisite software, and other

requirements on the servers

 The processing power of the servers, along with memory recommendations

rewired to support the workload and deliver the response time required

4.2 Understanding current processes and data

To start the capacity planning exercise, we need to understand how the existing

system is dealing with this content. This includes:

 Document types and counts

Documents should be grouped and categorized by type (for example, invoices

or claims). These groupings will be based on the way the documents are to be

treated for security, and indexing data and storage requirements. The groups

will probably translate to Content Manager item types.

 Document arrival rate

When, where, and how many documents are entering the system? Although

annual document volumes are often used as a benchmark, it is dangerous to

apply these statistics without knowing document arrival peaks and valleys. It

is critical to identify the peak arrival rate and size the system accordingly. It is

also useful to understand the locations and formats of the documents that can

be captured. Are all application forms sent to a central mail room and

processed there, or are they sent to individuals in branch offices?

 Document usage

When, where, and how is each kind of document used? For example, one

type of form might go through a business process, following a specific

workflow. The workflow process comprises seven different activities or steps