Chapter 7 - Capacity Planning

About This Chapter

When planning to implement a Web site, you must ensure that the network and its components can handle the number of users who will access it. Capacity planning —the process of measuring a Web site’s ability to deliver content to its visitors at an acceptable speed—is essential to making sure that your system will perform adequately when a peak number of users are accessing the applications and services in your network. Slow performance and unavailable service can encourage your customers to try other Web sites—and perhaps never return to yours. As a result, you must try to plan, to the best of your ability, for the greatest number of users who will try to use your site at the same time, and from that determination, you must ensure that your network’s hardware and software have sufficient capacity to meet anticipated demand. In this chapter you’ll be introduced to a number of issues related to capacity planning. You’ll also learn how to estimate user costs, such as CPU and memory usage, and how to plan your network’s capacity requirements.

Before You Begin

To complete the lessons in this chapter, you must have

• Experience administering Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and designing Windows 2000 networks
• Experience planning network capacity