Capacity management of SAN storage

Capacity management of SAN storage is typically a lower priority than more tactical operations like allocating storage, hardware updates, and firefighting.

Determining who is responsible for capacity management can be a difficult question to answer.

There are overlapping areas of responsibility and internal politics that complicate the issue. Those who normally do traditional capacity reporting may not have sufficient knowledge of the SAN environment to effectively report on it.

Once capacity management processes are put in place, acting on the information is critical in gaining value from the effort.

Quantifying the value gained can be difficult to measure and publicize, but it needs to be done.

Storage data can be looked at from multiple perspectives such as the host, fabric/network, storage controller, and other devices.

Collecting data from all these sources for centralized reporting is a major challenge and should be prioritized. Two key areas to focus on are response at the host and storage capacity utilization.

I’ll be discussing ways to assist the storage administrator in the complex task of managing SAN attached storage at my webinar ‘Capacity Management for SAN Attached Storage’ this Thursday, June 16 – register now and join me.

 http://www.metron-athene.com/training/webinars/index.html

Dale Feiste

Principal Consultant