System and method for analyzing capacity in a plurality of processing systems

Abstract

A system and method for projecting capacity of computer resources for a plurality of processing systems in a processing environment and for adjusting workload among said systems to improve resource utilization. An administrative processor determines the projected usage of computer resources for a plurality of computer systems in a processing environment by representing the capacity of each of the plurality of computer systems in a normalized unit and by sorting the capacities of the computer systems by the normalized or standardized units. The standardized unit, optimally time as measured as the life expectancy of each different resource of the computer system, is used for the N-axes of the N-dimensional space called a capacity space. Each computer system is mapped to a point in the capacity space, which normalizes configuration and capacity differences between systems by expressing the usage of all resources in the units of time. Once the normalized values have been defined and sorted, the administrative processor can make adjustments to the workload among the plurality of processing systems to improve the utilization of the capacity of the greatest number of processing systems in the processing environment.