Storage Capacity Reporting and Its Place in the Bigger Data-Management Picture

Storage capacity reporting itself is central to a wideDepending on their findings - based on whether they
range of key enterprise activities that revolve aroundfind current solutions to be inadequate or excessive -
capacity management. This range of services involvesa capacity manager may recommend tuning or
the creation, implementation and revision of plans aschanges to storage infrastructure in order to allow for
needed in order to allow users to properly handle allbetter utilization of a company's capacity management
activities related to their storage needs.solutions and resources. To this end, stored data
The first activity is the production of a capacitycapacity enhancements may be advocated. For
management plan concerning where to store the data,example, the adoption of larger-capacity solutions that
its capacity, when it is to be upgraded and other keymay allow for faster or less complicated storage or
decisions. Top management crafts this plan inretrieval may be recommended to replace
coordination with the recommendations of companies'smaller-capacity devices that may also be slower to
IT groups and based on such factors as the numberrespond, thus sapping productivity. Since the needs of
of employees, company activities, the state of thecompany divisions may themselves change as division
industry itself and so on. This plan is put to the testworkloads increase or decrease over time, those in
once the storage capacity systems are used. Throughcharge of storage capacity reporting often input
the use of capacity reporting solutions, IT personnelallowances in their recommendations should sudden
can monitor the service levels of the IT solutionsmid-course corrections become necessary.
employed over specified periods of time.