The Top 5 reasons for looking at server and storage capacity together

1. Poor disk I/O performance is a leading cause of application response problems.

Many times application response problems go undetected when I/O performance issues are intermittent. This scenario is made common by the highly shared and mixed back end storage environments that are pervasive these days. Applying basic capacity management methodologies to the storage environment can help identify and prevent these type of problems in advance.

2. Having historical data available for key storage metrics is critical to avoiding incidents.

Effective capacity management of storage requires having access to historical data. Capturing, collecting, and managing historical the data is a pre-requisite for analyzing it. Tools like athene®, that are designed for this purpose, make the job easy.

3. Knowing when to take action before an incident occurs can eliminate firefighting.

Automatic trending with alarms gives administrators advanced notice of impending problems. Scorecards can be used to make identifying  alarms more manageable. Having software available to help with configuring this functionality makes the job easy.

4. Managing capacity in a large storage environment can be very difficult and having the right tools is critical.

The amount of data that can be captured for storage related components can be overwhelming. Determining what data is most important and how frequently is should be collected it is a good first step. Configuring automated analysis and alarming of the data is the next step. As your capacity management operation for storage scales up, having the right software tools to help becomes critical.

5. Knowing how efficiently your storage environment is being used provides transparency.

Having visibility into a complex storage environment, from a capacity management perspective, is critical to knowing how efficiently storage is being used. If management asks where are the high storage costs coming from? This question can get answered accurately by using capacity management data.

If you’ve got any questions on the benefits of capacity managing servers and storage together feel free to ask.

Dale Feiste

Consultant