Storage Capacity Planning

Underutilized storage capacity can be a very expensive proposition for data center managers.  For Tier 1 data centers, a TerraByte (TB) of unused or wasted storage capacity can have a burdened cost (purchase price, maintenance, power, cooling, rack space, floor space, administration time, etc.) of $43,000 dollars per year.  Even a Tier 2 data center’s burdened cost for a TB of wasted storage is formidable, estimated at $15,000 dollar per year.  Getting the storage needs of the organization sized correctly can yield significant savings over the life of the data center.

The nlyte Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution supports a number of features that can help data center managers right-size their storage capacity.  With nlyte’s ability to handle complex relationships between assets, you can accurately map and model your data center storage infrastructure.  The advanced network mapping function enables the full port-to-port representation of the fibre connectivity from the server to the SAN switch, giving full visibility of the availability of ports on the SAN switch and the devices consuming those ports.  When provisioning new storage, understanding this port usage can help avoid time-consuming mistakes caused by trying to place storage equipment in cabinets that don’t have enough of the right connections.

The asset records in nlyte allow the user to specify the amount of space you wish to reserve on the SAN, and can be related to specific business applications, giving a full view of the space being used by different applications, business groups or even by classification of application (Windows or UNIX).  This capability protects against over-provisioning storage for applications that may be non-critical to the organization.

Other storage issues that negatively impact data center storage capacity involve “raw” storage (unformatted physical storage) and wasted, unused storage, “dark storage”, not claimed by servers or applications.  With nlyte’s new Discover module, this raw and dark storage can be tracked, visualized, and recovered to extend the storage capacity of your data center.