Storage Capacity Planning and Monitoring Tool

Storage capacity, or disk space, is the amount of data a storage device like a cache, USB drive, RAM, hard drive, or optical disk drive can contain. Storage devices are responsible for housing a computer’s data and applications and can either be internal or external to the computer. 

For example, cache memory and RAM are internal storage devices your computer relies on to temporarily store data. These are considered the computer’s primary storage devices. Secondary storage devices can either be internal (like a hard drive) or external (like a storage array). 

It’s important to remember storage capacity refers to the overall capacity of a storage device, not the capacity remaining after data has already been uploaded to the device. So, while a 64MB drive may only have 32MB remaining after files have been added to it, its storage capacity is still 64MB.

Storage capacity planning refers to forecasting future capacity needs to budget appropriately and allocate resources effectively. To perform storage capacity planning, IT admins must review their company’s existing capacity usage, growth rates, trends, and needs while evaluating upcoming changes requiring additional storage space—like the addition of new employees and applications. 

Some admins rely on spreadsheets to analyze multi-vendor storage data and conduct capacity planning, but this approach is time-consuming and often ineffective. This is where storage capacity management tools come into play. With the right tools, admins can centralize all their storage capacity data in a single intuitive platform for easy access to in-depth insights into their entire storage infrastructure, allowing them to make more informed capacity planning decisions. 

Storage capacity planning allows IT admins to make the most of their budget and allocate resources where needed. In the absence of informed storage capacity planning, IT teams may end up putting unnecessary spend into additional storage space or fail to invest in the storage infrastructure their company needs. While the former is a waste of resources, the latter can result in significant issues for end users.

For example, without access to enough storage space, an IT technician may run into a wall when it comes time to add a new, must-have application or program, bring employee productivity to a halt, and prevent critical projects from moving forward. Keeping a close eye on when capacity limits will be reached helps admins avoid surprise overruns, outages, and last-minute purchases. Effective capacity planning also helps admins prevent disk bottleneck issues and more easily get to the root of performance problems.

Storage capacity planning software streamlines the process of aggregating forecasting data like growth rates and when capacity will be met. The tool should also provide insights into storage health, so you can stop uneven storage consumption in its tracks as well as predict, prioritize, and resolve a range of issues—from outages to bottlenecks—before end users are affected. 

Capacity planning tools should also allow you to create custom alerts to notify you when predefined thresholds for fan speed, hardware temperature, power supply, and other key metrics have been crossed. These instant alerts can help ensure you can jump into action before storage problems get out of hand.

Storage Resource Monitor is built to automate storage capacity planning by aggregating multi-vendor storage capacity data into a single, web-based view. The platform is designed to track usage over time to identify issues in the storage array, and display storage growth trends and forecasts via interactive dashboards. 

These dashboards can also allow admins to trace dynamic relationships from VMs, LUNs, pools, and arrays, so you can get to the root cause of capacity issues quickly and efficiently. You can even generate web-based reports to view real-time performance data on capacity for server volumes, NAS volumes, LUNs, storage pools, and more.

With the platform’s integrated PerfStack™ feature, you can drag, drop, and overlay performance metrics from multiple network and storage sources within a single chart. Access to this level of in-depth capacity planning insight empowers your IT department to make more informed, efficient decisions about storage resources.