| Self-optimization is the ability of the IT infrastructure to efficiently maximize resource allocation and utilization to provide service for both system users and their customers. In the short term, self-optimization primarily addresses the complexity of managing system performance. In the long term, self-optimizing software applications may learn from experience and proactively tune themselves in an overall business objective context. Workload management uses self-optimizing technology to help optimize hardware and software use and verify that service-level goals are being met. Predictive analysis tools provide views into performance trends, allowing proactive action to be taken to help optimize the IT infrastructure before critical thresholds are exceeded. Tivoli software products that can be used to implement a self-optimizing environment include the following: -
Tivoli Service Level Advisor The Service Level Advisor helps prevent SLA breaches with predictive capabilities. It performs trend analysis based on historical performance data from Tivoli Enterprise™ Data Warehouse and can predict when critical thresholds could be exceeded in the future. By sending an event to Tivoli Enterprise Console, self-optimizing actions can be taken to help prevent the problem from occurring. -
Tivoli Workload Scheduler for Applications The Workload Scheduler for Applications automates, monitors, and controls the flow of work through the IT infrastructure on both local and remote systems. It can automate, plan, and control the processing of these workloads within the context of business policies. It uses sophisticated algorithms to maximize throughput and help optimize resource usage. -
Tivoli Business Systems Manager The Business Systems Manager has multiple functions within the Tivoli suite, among which is enabling optimization of IT problem repairs based on business impact of outages. It collects real-time operating data from distributed application components and resources across the enterprise and provides a comprehensive view of the IT infrastructure components that make up different business solutions. It works with Tivoli Enterprise Console to enable self-optimizing actions to help prevent poor performance from affecting a line of business, critical business process, or SLA. -
Tivoli Storage Manager The Storage Manager supports Adaptive Differencing technology to help optimize resource usage for backup. With Adaptive Differencing, the backup archive client dynamically determines an efficient approach for creating backup copies of just the changed bytes, changed blocks, or changed files, delivering improved backup performance over dial-up connections. These technologies allow just the minimum amount of data to be moved to backup, helping optimize network bandwidth, tape usage, and management overhead. -
Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance Monitoring for Transaction Performance helps customers tune their IT environments to meet predefined service-level objectives. It enables organizations to monitor the performance and availability of their e-business and enterprise transactions to provide a positive customer experience. It integrates with the Tivoli Enterprise Console environment for alerting and proactive management, helping enable optimization of resource usage from a transactional perspective. -
IBM Tivoli Analyzer for Lotus® Domino™ The Analyzer for Lotus Domino contains a Proactive Analysis Component that allows administrators to verify the availability and optimal performance of Lotus Domino servers. It provides intelligent server health monitoring and expert recommendations to correct problems. Figure 15.4 diagrams the software tools associated with self-optimization of Tivoli. Figure 15.4. The software tools associated with self-optimization of Tivoli. 
Currently, optimization is an intensive manual operation requiring great IT skill and diligence. It is a prime candidate for automation and will bring significant benefits to IT shops that embrace it. |
