5.1 Introduction to capacity planning Capacity planning is the process of determining the hardware and software resources that are required to adequately meet an application's service-level requirements. These resources include central processing unit (CPU) power, memory, storage space, and network bandwidth. As a capacity planner, you have to evaluate the current trends in resource usage, and plan for growth and changes before the application faces resource problems. This section introduces the capacity planning method for TXSeries. Capacity planning must be an ongoing process with the long-term objective of providing services to the user in a cost-effective manner. The capacity planning managers have the challenging task of understanding their application and the usage and growth patterns to accurately forecast future data processing capacity needs for the business. Capacity planning must be an integral part of application development, and must be a management function that is closely aligned with the strategic planning for the business. A methodical approach to capacity planning yields benefits that help you in the following ways: To avoid the inconvenience of running out of resources as the business grows