Data Center Capacity Planning

Definition - What does Data Center Capacity Planning mean?

Data center capacity planning is the process of planning for current and future hardware, software and other data center infrastructure requirements within a perceived time frame.

It is a form of IT capacity planning that reviews and analyzes current data center utilization in order to plan ahead for data center capacity increment, decrement, both or none.

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Techopedia explains Data Center Capacity Planning

Data center capacity planning is typically performed by data center executives and administrators. It is usually done by analyzing the data center utilization for one to five years ahead of current operations/utilization.

Data center capacity planning may include, but is not limited to:

Current peak and off-peak data center resource utilization
Identifying the depletion and obsolescence time frame of data center infrastructure
Identifying data center resources that need to be increased, decreased or replaced in the future
Planning for the design and implementation of newer resources or capacity changes as identified