Status Quo of "Buy More Storage"
 
"We continually run out of space and continue to exceed our capacity planning estimates"
Vice President of Information Technology - Major Studio
 
 
The "Buy More" Approach to Data Management
Many causes of storage expansion are unavoidable. Increased service demands, higher resolution images, etc. However, a significant amount of capacity growth results from avoidable factors such as underutilization of existing capacity, storing duplicate copies of files, and retaining files on the data production line that are no longer required. The capacity growth drives costs higher despite the declining cost of per-unit storage.
 
Companies in a data management crisis are often too busy "fighting fires" to stop the vicious cycle and help themselves. To many, the approach to data management consists of:
  • Ignore the problem, buy more disk space, keep everything including bad data.
  • "Tiered Storage" - look for cheaper ways to implement more storage e.g. "low cost disks" for less critical data
  • Clean up consists of sending out emails about targeted data, backup targeted data, delete targeted data and hope no one complains
  • Over provision storage to provide buffer for unpredictable demand.
  • Add more storage to index existing files. Search and classification technology is implemented. The effectiveness is often dependent on the indexing scheme, the index can grow in size to 28% of the actual source data being indexed.