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[+] TBMA Challenge: Storage consumption across multiple applications 

Mon October 16, 2017 10:55 AM

TBMA challenges are designed to help sharpen your TBM and Apptio skills. See title for rating: [+] Easy   [++] Moderate   [+++] Challenging

 

Premier CSM @Chris Davidson stumped a lot of community members with his last challenge and now he's at it again. Anyone who can solve his next TBMA Challenge wins the Apptio U Star award (worth 30 points)

 

We'll follow up November 6 with the answer and badge winner(s). Make sure to get in the game before then by submitting your answer 

 

 

In my cost transparency model, I directly allocate Storage cost to my list of Applications:

 

This is working well. When a storage volume supports more than one application, the volume cost correctly splits across the multiple applications.

 

But today I stumbled upon something odd (click to enlarge):

This is an application detail report for FTP Client for Windows, showing storage costs contributing to this application's total cost.

The costs are correct. Storage Total Space is correct. But Storage Used Space doesn't look quite right.

 

I clicked the Tier 1 link in the report to drill down further:

 

Then I headed over to the IT Ops - Storage Insights report to study this particular storage volume:

 

I clicked the Supported Apps link in the report table and found:

 

This makes sense. This storage volume does indeed support two apps: FTP Client for Windows, and Microsoft Office.

So next I analyzed Microsoft Office in its app details report:

Uh-oh. Both Microsoft Office and FTP Client for Windows say they're using 68 GB of storage space on the qlxdgsdw00230ak38.qaeclipsegrp.com storage volume. But actually these two apps are using a combined total of 68 GB, not 68 GB each.

 

The app detail report table above is locked to two objects (Applications and Storage) but apparently it's just reading in the Storage Master Data.Storage Used Space column as-is, no matter how many apps this storage volume supports.

 

How can I fix the Storage Used Space information in my reports?

 






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Comments

Jenny Franklin
Mon November 20, 2017 08:18 PM

Hey Rhonda!  Did I get 30 points as well?  I think I was one of the 7 unless it was a misprint   Happy Thanksgiving!!


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Apptio Community Member
Mon November 20, 2017 04:31 PM

Thank you Rhonda!!! Much appreciated…

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!!

 

Regards

Srikanth


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Apptio Community Member
Mon November 20, 2017 04:28 PM

Yes, just now :-) We're pulling this Stumper off the home page tomorrow, so we don't want the winners to be forgotten. Thanks for the reminder! 

@Julie Batty, @Doug Copeland, Tom Gottschamer, Srikanth Satakopan, @Savitha Sathyanathan, @Jonathan Strauss this explains the 30 pt jump in your community points today. Well done 


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Apptio Community Member
Mon November 13, 2017 03:28 PM

@Rhonda Keller , did you award community  points to the winners??


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Apptio Community Member
Fri November 10, 2017 06:23 PM

Congratulations, @Savitha Sathyanathan!!


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Oliver Smith
Wed November 08, 2017 06:11 AM

Greta job guys! I may have completely forgot to answer this haha. I made a mental note of it as soon as I saw it, and then apparently threw that note away. 

 

Looking forward to the next one!


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Apptio Community Member
Tue November 07, 2017 08:02 AM

So happy to see the results. First thing I checked this morning was to see if my submission (#2) was one of the correct answers. Great to see the results and waiting for the next stumper!!

@Babu Hussainsab Mehrunnesa @Ericka Norman @Pablo Santana @Raquel Garcia @Taryn Kane @Alex Puga


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Jenny Franklin
Mon November 06, 2017 12:16 PM

What Julie said 


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Julie Batty
Mon November 06, 2017 10:32 AM

I love these challenges and looking forward to the next one already (sorry Chris )


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Chris Davidson
Mon November 06, 2017 10:28 AM

Congratulations to 7 of you who submitted a correct answer:

Julie Batty
Doug Copeland
Jenny Franklin
Thomas Gottschamer
Srikanth Satakopan
Savitha Sathyanathan
Jonathan Strauss

 

Two ways to fix Storage Used Space in the project:

 

1. Create a new model ("Storage Consumption") with just two objects: Storage and Applications. The unit driver for Storage can be Storage Master Data.Storage Used Space. The key linking the two objects can be application name or ID (thus allowing one storage volume to allocate its used space to one or more applications). Unless we have specifics of how much storage each application is using, we'll stick with an even spread for now. Then my qlxdgsdw00230ak38.qaeclipsegrp.com storage volume will send 34 GB to Microsoft Office and 34 GB to FTP Client for Windows. We'll customize the report to include the new Storage Consumption metric in place of Storage Master Data.Storage Used Space.

 

2. Assuming Storage Master Data table already has one row per unique combination of storage volume ID and relevant application ID (Example: my table has two rows, qlxdgsdw00230ak38.qaeclipsegrp.com - Microsoft Office and qlxdgsdw00230ak38.qaeclipsegrp.com - FTP Client for Windows), add a few columns directly to Storage Master Data to handle the math of the split:

Apps per Volume = SumIf(Storage Volume ID, Storage Volume ID, 1)

Storage Used Space = Storage Used Space / Apps per Volume (an in-place value override)

 

#1 is useful for visualizing resource splits (and allows us to accommodate more advanced splitting and weighting logic later if needed). Remember that sometimes we build model metrics to allocate "stuff" instead of just money.

 

#2 is nice because we don't need to edit any reports, but we may need to tinker with execution order to make sure the new formulas occur in the right order (since one depends on the other).


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