Capacity Planning

The amount of data you need to handle is only going to increase. Plan for it and act accordingly

Size does matter in this case. Every enterprise needs to

decide for a judicious use of their storage capacity. They should know how much

more do they need to store all kinds of data that is being generated or used in

the organization. That's where capacity planning pitches in. Capacity planning

is about calculating in advance (and making an educated guess) about how much

storage you would need in an enterprise like it's not just all files that's in

the storage, but there are lot of useless user files (photos, MP3, downloads.),

e-mail, IM records and so on.

Options too many



If I had a nickel for every storage management software product, I could be

filthy rich. That's precisely how many such products are available out there

in the market. But more than this, what's important is knowing what you need

and ignoring the rest.Another big pain point for users is the need for better

management tools, an underlying pain point is the allocated versus utilized

(capacity) issue. Users need to better determine what's being utilized vs.

what's been allocated so that they can re-allocate unused capacity.

While the storage industry continues to debate the issue of

where advanced storage services should reside, vendors of fabric switches and

virtualization software are standardizing application interfaces for

network-based storage applications.

A step in this regard is the FAIS (Fabric Application

Interface Standard)--a multi-vendor initiative that is defining new and more

intimate relationships between the network infrastructure and storage

applications. It represents a major step in the development of SAN technology as

it evolves from simple connectivity to intelligence. FAIS facilitates the

migration of storage virtualization and other enhanced services from edge

devices such as hosts and storage arrays to the network core.

Combining storage and networking into a SAN creates new

capabilities that are far more diverse than the sum of its parts. Traditional

network management, for example, focuses on data transport between source and

destination. Address assignment, device configuration, bandwidth allocation,

routing protocols, traffic monitoring, and historical reporting for capacity

planning may be incorporated into a network management application to ensure

proper data transport through a network infrastructure. Conventional storage

management may center on allocation of storage resources via LUN assignment,

RAID levels, storage utilization, and backup scheduling.

Advanced Storage Area Networks (SANs) provide one of the

best approaches for addressing the explosion of data and its management. SANs

help enable storage consolidation and deliver higher availability of critical

enterprise data and applications. Furthermore, SANs facilitate improved storage

resource utilization and more effective storage management.

The next wave



Storage automation is being dubbed as the 'next big wave' in storage

management. This is because the storage management networks have become so

heterogeneous and complex to manage, that automating them will soon become a

necessity. You should also go for cooperative data classification. The aim here

is to quantify the value of different datasets, which in turn would determine

the class of storage that each dataset requires.

Central to planning is the concept that data changes over

time, in relation to evolving customer demands and business conditions. To

achieve on the similar lines, some enterprises already have shifted

non-essential data to secondary tiers of storage, freeing primary storage

resources for high-value applications.

Tiered storage segments data based on its varying business

value. This helps to control storage costs and simplify data management. A

typical tiered architecture for storage could use a SAN for transactional or

production data. Data of lesser importance can be shifted to secondary arrays

behind the primary storage networks.

So to cut a long story short, the organizations going for

tiered storage must:

• segment data based on business value

• realise that data is always evolving over time and so
  
  should the storage and the capacity

• winnow thousands of datasets into a manageable number

• tell your vendors about specific attributes for all
  
  storage classes

• automate the complete
  
  storage management and set common enterprise-wide policies for the
  
  same

The lucky seven



What you should choose and how you should go about it are the topmost

concerns on a CIO's mind when planning for effective storage capacity. We tell

you how you can do that in just seven simple ways.

Small can only get bigger.

Most organizations make the mistake of starting a mammoth task in on go. And

that's where most of the capacity-planning efforts fail after the initial

hoopla. This is especially true for those who don't have any previous

experience in this area. So start with just a few of the most critical

resources-say, processors or bandwidth-and to gradually expand the program

as you gain more experience.

Speak their language.

Instead of asking your team for predictions about the expected rise in the

resources with the business, it's wise to ask the developers and the end users

what they would know. For instance, one can enquire about the what kind of

resources and how much are used during peak loads, and manage that.

Compatibility/interoperability.

When you are choosing capacity-planning tools, keep in mind new and upcoming

architectures in the market and select packages that can be used today and will

be compatible with ones that come tomorrow. This consideration should extend not

just to servers, but to disk arrays, tape equipment, desktop workstations and

network hardware.

Involve suppliers.

To make your capacity-planning products usable across multiple platforms, share

your plans with your suppliers. When you do this, always accommodate all

logistics and other overheads and reach a consensus. Once they are involved,

they will side by you in getting products that are close to your planned ones.

Plan for the unseen.

Some capacity upgrades are linear, ie doubling the amount of the quantity of one

resource (say, increase in processors, memory, channels, or disk volumes) will

double the cost of the upgrade. But if the upgrade approaches the upper limit

(say, maximum number of cards, chips, or slots that a device can hold) a

relatively modest increase in capacity may end up costing an immodest amount for

additional hardware.

Plan for the occasional.

A forecasted change in workload may not always cause an increase in the capacity

required. Departmental mergers, staff reductions, and productivity gains may

result in some production workloads being reduced. Similarly, development

workloads may decrease as major projects become deployed. While increases in

needed capacity are clearly more likely, reductions are possible. A good

guideline to use when questioning users about future workloads is to emphasize

changes, not just increases.

Sky is the limit.

One of the best ways to continually improve the effectiveness of the

capacity-planning process is to set a goal to expand and improve at least one

part of it with each new version of the plan. Possible enhancements could

include the addition of new platforms, centralized printers, or remote

locations. A new version of the plan should be created at least once a year and

preferably every six months.