A knowledge based decision support system for computer performance management

Computer systems managers make decisions about hardware and software selection, performance evaluation, capacity planning, and other resource variables on the basis of factual data, accounting data, subjective judgments, and assumptions about the resource consumption of the jobs being run. The importance of computer resource planning calls for effective support methods. A Knowledge-Based DSS (KBDSS) will be able to assist managers in making these policy decisions by utilizing knowledge of the existing configuration and its capabilities, the organizational computing environment, available external resources, and their suppliers. Combining procedural and declarative methods, such as KBDSS may provide early warning of possible bottlenecks, forecast growth of hardware usage, and employ knowledge based inferencing to suggest suitable remedial actions to the systems manager. This paper presents a KBDSS for supporting computer resource planning decisions using a procedural/declarative framework, and illustrates the system’s usage aspects.