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Capacity PlanningBelow is a 3-step plan that will allow you to accurately predict how much and what kind of storage the organization will require, based on historical trends, to meet the future capacity needs of users and applications. Following these simple steps is important because it can be the difference between IT being seen as a cost center and being recognized as a valued, strategic leader in your business.
Step 1: Assemble your Future Application/Workload Plans
Retrieve the macro data that exists outside of your current storage environment before planning at the individual array level, including:
– What new applications will be implemented
– Where the application is hosted (i.e. what location)
– What the storage performance requirements are
– The primary and backup storage needs
– and the amount of data backed up regularly and how long it is stored
This macro data is critical information to ensuring you do not undersize your needs and end up having to ask for more money.
Step 2: Consider the integration of new workloads within existing Storage Data
This step is intended to document all additional workloads that will increase storage usage outside of organic growth. In some cases, this may not be a new application but a new set of information being stored digitally.
For example, you may hear, “we are planning on digitizing all patient records and storing them on our new file storage device.” There may not be a new application specifically associated with the storage increase. Still, in this case, this event will create an increase in used storage as a result of new information stored.
We often run into these circumstances when individual departments have not provided information that IT can use to make the appropriate capacity predictions within their existing infrastructure and result in unexpected capacity growth and worse, unplanned purchases.
Step 3: Build array specific capacity plans based on the data at the location.
Consider existing organic growth, model new workload additions, and plan capacity requirements based on storage tiers.
Array specific modeling allows you to be sure you optimize the use of storage across all arrays within a location and avoid situations where you have some arrays over-utilized and others under-utilized. Array specific modeling often improves IT future budget requests by enhancing executive confidence in the accuracy of analysis from both a technical and a financial perspective.
In many circumstances, your team does not have the time or available insight to explore these considerations and make capacity budgeting decisions with certainty. Visual One Intelligence ® (Visual One) can support you and your team in steps 1, 2, & 3, helping you quit the guessing game.
Without your focus on these three key considerations, capacity underestimation will result in emergency storage purchases, stripping available funds, resulting in inadequate funding to support basic IT services. Attend one of our Capacity and Budgeting virtual events in the coming weeks to learn how Visual One Intelligence will enable your to position IT as a valued, strategic leader in your business, starting with planning and executing on an accurate capacity strategy.
