Does Your Storage Environment Need A Capacity Assessment?

Do you know how much of your storage is actually being used? Do you know which of your thousands of host volumes are going to run out of storage in the next three months? Do you know where storage is so underutilized and growing at a slow enough rate such that you can reclaim significant storage? When you request to add more storage, do you have forecasts that objectively justify the economics of the purchase? Do you have a storage capacity plan that optimally allocates new storage?

If you can't confidently answer all these questions, then you're in need of a professional storage capacity assessment. A storage capacity assessment will

Generate a Capacity Plan -a detailed, written storage capacity plan which will likely provide Capital Expenditure (CapEx) improvements by increasing the efficiency of your storage usage.

Pinpoint Areas of Concern - areas where host volumes are forecasted to exceed critical thresholds.

Detect CapEx Savings Opportunities - areas where host volumes are underutilized and exhibit very low growth.

Identify Situations to Investigate - areas where host volumes exhibit very low growth and could possibly be moved to a lower cost tier of storage.

For more information on Storage Capacity Assessments, download a sample Storage Capacity Assessment.

For a limited time, MonoSphere will provide qualified organizations the opportunity to receive this service free of charge.The service utilizes our award winning MonoSphere Storage Horizon software.  Storage Horizon collects data from application hosts in an automatic, agent-less manner.  After 4 – 6 weeks of data collection, our storage experts will use Storage Horizon to find hot spots, determine opportunities to reclaim significant unused capacity, and create a storage capacity growth plan based on your actual data. You will receive a report which includes charts, graphs and forecasts and a detailed written summary for your actual environment.

After the assessment is completed, there is no obligation to continue with MonoSphere, but if you do, you can elect to continue the capacity planning service with MonoSphere under a subscription service agreement or you may purchase a license of the software with either perpetual use or subscription-based pricing.  If you're interested, please call Steve Ackley (650-595-3105) at your earliest convenience as we have only limited slots available for this outstanding offer.

Storage Tips

This edition's storage tip provides a great way to save Capital Expenditure (CapEx) spending - recover underutilized storage. With average utilization (used storage divided by allocated storage) between 30% - 40%, there is often a goldmine of opportunity to reclaim wasted storage from volumes that exhibit low utilization. Steps to follow are:

1. Identify the Opportunities

This entails finding volumes which not only exhibit low utilization today, but have growth rates such that utilization is forecasted to stay low. To identify these areas:

A. Collect historical usage rates for all the volumes in your environment on at least a daily basis.

B. Forecast utilization of each volume using advanced statistical calculations on your historical data.

C. Define a policy for under utilized storage – a recommendation is any volume whose forecasted utilization is less than 40% over the next year.

D. Make a list of all the volumes that fit your under utilized criteria.

Due to the dynamic nature of storage growth and the time and accuracy issues of manual data collection, it is recommended to automate this step with an agent-less systematic storage capacity planning solution.

2. Find a Better Location for the Data

Depending on how you manage your storage, a better location can mean many things, but typically better means to a smaller volume on the same or new disk group to which the host server has access. The approximate new volume size should result in a utilization level such that you have enough "headroom" in the volume for twice the storage lead time (the number of months it takes to have a storage purchase approved and sent to the vendor, receive and deploy new storage, and provision it). For example, if your storage lead time is 3 months, look at your volume forecasts 6 months into the future and determine the volume size for say, 70% utilization. Once a good location is identified, grow the existing volume to accommodate the new data.

3. Migrate the Data

The next step is to migrate the data from the original volume to the smaller volume, or if your system allows it, shrink the volume. This step is typically scheduled to run during maintenance hours – a day and time during off hours when IT has a window to perform functions such as upgrades and migrations.

4. De-Allocate the Original Volume

Once the data is migrated and the volume manager is pointing to the new volume, the original volume can be deleted and its space returned to the appropriate disk group for use by other volumes.

Depending on the size of the data and the speed of the transport, the data migration can take from minutes to hours. However, the total person time to set this all up and manage the process should be no more than an hour or two for many volumes. This is a quick and inexpensive way to get more value from the storage you have already purchased.

Storage Horizon 2.2 Ships

The newest release of the award winning Storage Horizon software shipped this month. Storage Horizon now further optimizes planning for storage capacity by providing the Storage Planner, a new module in Storage Horizon 2.2, which automates analysis to determine:

1. When additional storage is needed – By comparing forecasts to user definable thresholds and taking into account the time to purchase and deploy storage, the Storage Planner calculates when new storage needs to be allocated and/or purchased to stay within desired utilization levels.

2. How much storage is required – The Storage Planner calculates the optimal amount of storage to allocate in order to meet application consumption needs while staying within target utilization levels.

3. Where storage is needed – The Storage Planner specifies which host volumes are projected to approach utilization thresholds and require additional allocated storage.

4. Where the additional storage will come from – The Storage Planner determines if the required storage can come from existing unallocated storage on the storage subsystem, from the purchase of additional disk drives in existing subsystems, or from the purchase of new subsystems.

The Storage Planner module also provides the user with a financial "What If" capability which allows administrators to adjust utilization thresholds up or down and immediately see the projected financial impact on their Capital Expenditure (CapEx) budget.

In addition to the Storage Planner module, new capabilities in Storage Horizon 2.2 include:

Role based user accounts – The Storage Horizon administrator can assign pre-defined roles to user accounts which determine the user's access to different parts of the application. The roles are Administrator, Operator, and Monitor.

Forecasting and analysis user guidelines – Based on statistical analysis, Storage Horizon will provide feedback to the user on the cogency of their forecasts. Parameters considered include duration of collected data, growth volatility, and possible seasonal effects. The release also includes support for non-linear (exponential) forecasting.

Extended support of host operating system platforms – Storage Horizon now supports discovery and collection from application hosts running HP-UX and Linux, in addition to Windows®, Solaris™, and AIX® servers and NetApp® Data ONTAP® filers.

Extended support of applications - Storage Horizon supports storage capacity planning for Sybase® databases, in addition to Oracle® databases, MS SQL databases, and MS Exchange.

MonoSphere Employee Stoplight – Heidi Schoolcraft, UI Architect

"If your software does not have a good user interface, it's hard for customers to use the product effectively," said Heidi Schoolcraft, User Interface Architect at MonoSphere Inc. "Our goal is to make the Storage Horizon user interface so intuitive that folks can be productive with the product with minimal training and support." Heidi is the team lead of the award winning Storage Horizon User Interface team. She must coordinate among software developers, graphical designers, and workflow planners to deliver an end user experience that leaves customers wondering how storage capacity planning can be so easy to perform. "I get great satisfaction from seeing first-time customers use the product without having to ask many questions."

When Heidi is not busy architecting storage management's best user interface, she can be found spending time with her family, reading a book, or at the Shark Tank cheering on her beloved San Jose Sharks hockey team.

In The News

May 19, 2006
MonoSphere adds capacity planning
By Ann Silverthorn, InfoStor

May 15, 2006
MonoSphere adds Storage Planner
By Mario Apicella, InfoWorld

May 3, 2006
Storage Questions to ask yourself
Opinion by Jerome Wendt, Computerworld