- The 10 dumbest mistakes network managers make
- Six Windows 7 features admins will actually care about
- Why the iPhone can't be "killed"
- Nortel enterprise chief wants to bring back Bay
- More porn sneaks onto the iPhone
Storage analyst Deni Connor focuses on storage, application and infrastructure management in this twice-weekly newsletter.
Planning the storage capacity you need is sometimes like a blind-folded partygoer pinning the tail on a donkey - it’s a hit or miss proposition.
Many storage administrators allocate storage capacity by application – if they have an Exchange message store running on a Windows host, they will allocate XX amount of storage to it. When the message store starts filling up the disk, they’ll start the process of obtaining more storage.
They may make those storage acquisition decisions via some mental scribbling or with the help of manually-produced spreadsheets, both of which can cause unpredictable results. To avoid running out of capacity, often they over-provision storage.
MonoSphere, a storage start-up, introduced software in 2005 that monitors and measures storage allocation. The software can look at an application and the storage allocated to it and predict when a customer should buy more storage.
Predicting storage capacity by application at first seems to be a good idea. In a survey of 366 Oracle users 60% reported that their database performance was hindered by a lack of available storage and 46% said that database availability was affected by storage capacity.
Basing storage capacity on application allocation alone though can lead to unwise storage acquisition, especially if the storage allocated is underutilized.
The company’s new software, Storage Horizon 3.0 now views the volumes on the application hosts and maps or correlates them to the storage assigned (LUN) to them. It can show how much storage is being used of the storage allocated to an application.
***
Storage in the news in the past week:
The Storage Networking Industry Association announced last week that its Storage Management Interface Specification (SMI-S) has gained International Standards Organization approval.
For a little humor, watch Hitachi Data Systems’ virtualization video clip on YouTube. It’s all about virtualization in the controller and not the network, and turns storage administrators into ‘mindless drones,’ who are virtualized the Hitachi-way.
ProStor Systems, a developer of removable disk storage systems, announced the launch of a Web site, RDXstorage.com, which carries news of vendors that make RDX drives for small and midsize businesses.
Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.
The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.
Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization
The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.
An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Partner Content
Explore the Ultrium Edge
The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.
Find Out More
Disk and Tape Square Off
Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization
Download this White Paper
Don't Fall for the Myths
The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.
Review this information
information examination
An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption
Read this analysis
Comment