Patent ID: 7818150

Claim:
A method of scaling a production network, the production network including a client computer connected to a plurality of servers on which a set of business functions are running, where each business function is a user task having a sequence of transactions between the client computer and the plurality of servers, comprising the steps of: initiating a single business function trace test on the production network for a single business function in the set of business functions; gathering network flow trace data from the production network; deriving a transaction summary from the network flow trace data wherein the transaction summary comprises a tabular listing of the sequence of transactions for each business function in the set of business functions, the tabular listing including information related to resource usage within the plurality of servers; initiating a single business function load test on the production network; gathering a set of resource data from the plurality of servers; normalizing the resource data; wherein the step of normalizing further comprises: synchronizing and merging the set of resource data into a single table, converting the set of resource data to a set of consistent units, equalizing the set of resource data to a set of standard measurement intervals by extrapolating a set of utilization data within the set of resource data and, aggregating a set of servers, from the plurality of servers, into a mega server; gathering web log data from at least one server from the plurality of servers for the single business function; deriving a measured number of executions of the single business function on the production network during a predefined time period on the production network; calculating a first consumption of resources used by the plurality of servers; calculating a business function cost for the single business function by dividing the first consumption of resources by the measured number of executions of the single business function; creating a business function profile from the transaction summary and the business function cost for the single business function; building a discrete event simulation model from the business function profile; optimizing the production network to provide a scaled production network, by performing a simulation with the discrete event simulation model in a simulation application running on an analysis computer; and producing a report of the scaled production network on the analysis computer.