Capacity planning

Storage capacity planning is forecasting how much capacity will be needed and when. Built on an index, it uses the estate’s own measured growth by project, team, and format. Built on vendor averages, it produces a number that describes somebody else’s environment.

Key takeaways

Capacity planning forecasts future storage needs from measured growth.
Growth by project, team, and file type gives a more useful forecast than a total.
Quotas limit growth, and capacity planning predicts it.

Why does capacity planning matter?

Because running out of storage stops work, and buying too early ties up money in unused capacity. A plan based on real growth by system, project, and owner shows when to buy, how much, and how much could be reclaimed first. It also gives procurement time when lead times are long.

What is quota management?

Quota management sets limits on how much capacity a user, group, or directory can consume. A quota measures volume and says nothing about value, so a quota on its own pushes a team to delete whatever is easiest rather than whatever matters least. Quotas work best alongside visibility, where the team can see which files are safe to remove.

What data does a storage capacity plan need?

Measured growth, broken down the way the business spends money. A useful plan uses attributes such as capacity and file count by project, team, and storage tier, the share of data not read in a set period, and the growth rate of each over the past year. Totals from a vendor dashboard show how full a system is. Breakdowns from file metadata show who is filling it, which data could move, and when the next purchase is really due.

How do storage lead times and prices affect capacity planning?

They make planning ahead more important than it used to be. TrendForce reported that nearline hard drive lead times grew from a few weeks to more than 52 weeks, and VDURA’s Flash Volatility Index shows the price of a 30TB hard drive rising from $495 to $1,216 in one year. When new capacity takes a year to arrive and costs more each quarter, a plan has to show early when space will run out, and how much of it can be freed before then.

How does reclaiming storage change a capacity plan?

It moves the date of the next purchase. Capacity freed by moving cold data to less costly tiers and removing data with no remaining use is capacity the plan does not need to buy. In Diskover deployments, 30% to 50% of a data estate typically proves reclaimable once it is analyzed, which is why measuring what is reclaimable is the first step of a realistic plan.