Essential Considerations for Data Storage Capacity Planning

Data storage capacity planning may seem like a simple problem to solve: add more capacity when you need more storage, right? But accurate planning requires more thought and careful consideration than that.

Businesses should understand what their needs are now and where they’re likely to go in the future to protect critical business operations, support strong data performance, and keep plans within budget. Evolving technologies, such as AI and machine learning, are also leading to greater investments in data storage, making capacity planning more vital than ever.

We’ll cover what’s involved in data storage capacity planning, how businesses can calculate what they’ll need, and best practices to keep in mind while in the strategic stages.

What is Data Storage Capacity Planning?

A business conducts data storage capacity planning to decide how much storage it will need in the future. This is based primarily on analyzing historical data generation, access, and storage and using it to forecast future data storage needs.

Data storage capacity planning can also take into account potential business shifts, market trends, and new tools that may give rise to changes in capacity requirements.

Effective data storage capacity planning is important for a few reasons. Organizations can use this planning to make educated decisions about investments in hardware, software, and other data-supporting infrastructure. This can help businesses make cost-effective moves and limit the risk of unnecessary storage costs.

When organizations have planned accurately for the necessary storage capacity, they can also see improved performance and enjoy greater data accessibility. Many industries also have certain requirements around data storage and retention. Creating a plan for data storage can help organizations comply with necessary regulatory standards.

Effective data storage capacity planning should:

• Use accurate forecasting to predict future growth patterns
• Determine how resources can be allocated most efficiently
• Identify opportunities to cut down on unnecessary expenses
• Create a plan for future, scalable growth

Can You Calculate Data Storage Capacity?

Calculating data storage capacity can mean several different things. This can be about the current capacity in a disk storage system or estimating future disk storage space needs. Calculations can be done at the file level or look at the storage habits of an entire business. You may need to convert file sizes into different units to better understand capacity.

While determining current and anticipated capacity isn’t always easy, most operating systems come with storage calculations, and you can use third-party tools to determine the storage solutions that are right for your data storage, transfer, and access needs. Some calculators come with different modes. The more detailed information a business puts in, the more accurate the information that comes out.

How Does Storage Capacity Planning Work?

Data storage capacity involves understanding short-term capacity requirements and using that, plus other expected shifts to your business, to determine long-term capacity requirements.

To calculate short-term capacity requirements, a business needs to know:

• How much storage capacity is currently available
• The average size of a file saved at the organization, or the average size of storage that is used per week or month

By using these figures, you can determine how many weeks or months your business can go without scaling up capacity. Of course, averages become more useful if businesses have access to more historical data.

These basic metrics can be used to extrapolate future data capacity needs; however, additional factors also need to be considered, including:

• Business projections, such as anticipated business growth, addition of new products or services, or anticipated changes to data retention policies
• New applications and systems and their storage requirements
• New data format types and their size and capacity needs
• Level of data compression

Businesses also need to determine their desired storage efficiency factor, or how effectively the storage system uses its raw storage capacity. This could be 70%, for example. The projected data volume can be multiplied by that storage efficiency factor to estimate the raw storage capacity required to meet future storage requirements.

Key Considerations for Effective Data Storage Capacity Planning

Effective capacity planning requires a thorough assessment of current storage utilization, projections for future growth, and performance requirements. Businesses should also factor in the use of cloud storage vs. local storage, the level of business continuity and disaster recovery measures needed, and the budget required to remain cost-effective.

Current Storage Utilization Assessment

The first step of planning involves thoroughly assessing current storage utilization. This involves taking an inventory of all existing available storage resources and tracking average consumption patterns for both average storage amounts and peak usage times.

If there are any bottlenecks in storage performance, take note of that as well. The assessment should also include how effectively data is compressed, deduplicated, and otherwise optimized.

Data Growth Projections and Scalability Needs

Once you’ve established your historical data, study past trends to identify average growth rates and seasonal fluctuations. If you notice any spikes in storage needs, contextualize the results – was this during the push of a new product or service? Were there any regulatory changes on data retention? Or did the business go through a merger or acquisition?

Use this information to establish what is normal business growth, and consider future business moves that may result in similar spikes or fluctuations. Whatever storage infrastructure you choose, it should be able to handle future growth without resulting in significant business disruptions.

Performance Requirements

Not all storage types behave the same. Different storage types have different impacts on performance, so it’s important to balance capacity with performance needs. By identifying performance-critical applications, businesses can prioritize low latency and high throughput with the right storage technologies.

For example, solid-state drives (SSDs) are significantly faster compared to hard disk drives (HDDs) because they don’t have as many moving parts and use flash memory to store data much more efficiently. Applications that don’t require such high performance can fare well with HDDs at much lower costs.

Hybrid drives offer storage capacity similar to an HDD with performance benefits like an SSD. Because of this, they can strike a good balance between cost and performance. Businesses may also choose cloud storage services, which are highly scalable and accessible.

Cloud Storage

A hybrid or multicloud approach to data storage capacity planning is likely to involve some kind of cloud storage. By incorporating cloud storage, organizations can adjust storage capacity based on changing needs, reduce upfront costs from storage infrastructure, and take advantage of redundancy and other disaster recovery measures employed by the cloud provider.

However, performance in cloud storage can vary based on the distance the business is from the data center, network bandwidth, and what storage infrastructure the cloud provider uses. It’s important to choose the cloud provider with the right locations, redundancies, and performance metrics that support your operational objectives.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Data loss can be massively detrimental to a business. Even an hour or a few minutes of lost data for some businesses can be a mission-critical failure. The average cost of downtime can range anywhere from $427 per minute for small businesses to $9,000 for larger operations. Disaster recovery and business continuity measures should be commensurate with the level of data loss and downtime your organization can withstand.

The right data storage solution will have the data retention and backup frequency requirements that you need. Redundant storage systems – having data stored to more than one location and having redundant systems to support the infrastructure – can protect against data loss. Disaster recovery plans also need to be tested regularly to ensure effectiveness.

Cost-Effectiveness

Large capacity, strong performance, and high redundancy may be what all businesses want, but every feature comes at a cost. Organizations need to analyze upfront costs and ongoing expenses, as well as potential cost savings, to figure out which data storage options are the most cost-effective. Understanding cost-effectiveness coincides with calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO), the long-term costs associated with purchasing and maintaining hardware and software, as well as associated costs such as energy consumption and rental space.

Businesses can also reduce costs if they find opportunities to optimize through data compression, deduplication, and pay-as-you-go options like cloud storage.

5 Best Practices for Data Storage Capacity Planning

When it’s time to start planning for the data storage capacity you need, you should have monitoring, data optimization, retention policies, and analytics tools ready to go.

Complete Regular Assessments and Monitoring

Don’t assume that the capacity you anticipate will be what you actually need. Confirm or shift your forecasts by conducting regular assessments and monitoring. Watching data consumption patterns and finding trends can lead to more accurate planning.

Monitoring can also help uncover storage bottlenecks, where low performance could be negatively impacting business operations, as well as storage efficiency issues. Assessment and monitoring tools can evaluate how effectively data is being compressed, deduplicated, and optimized in other ways.

By taking a proactive stance in your data capacity planning, you can pinpoint shortages and address them before they become larger problems for your organization.

Perform Data Deduplication and Compression

If businesses aren’t careful, unnecessary data can start taking up space. Redundant data can significantly decrease storage utilization.

Data deduplication and compression can reduce redundant data and compress data files, optimizing storage utilization and reducing the overall storage capacity needed to store organizational data. Lower data capacities can also equal improved performance and lower costs.

Develop Data Archiving and Retention Policies

Some data, even if it isn’t accessed frequently, needs to be retained. Businesses must be mindful of retention policies, whether they come from the organization level, or are based on the industry or location of the business. Because data that needs to be retained may not require frequent access, it can be archived in lower-cost storage solutions while still meeting regulatory requirements.

Leverage Storage as a Service (STaaS)

Cloud-based Storage as a Service (STaaS) can be used for on-demand storage resources, which can be quickly deployed and adjusted as needed. STaaS is a type of cloud storage that is focused solely on scalable and secure storage solutions. It’s often a managed service where customers only pay for the storage they use. This can be a great complement to other cloud storage methods a business is employing.

Use Data Analytics and/or Data Storage Capacity Planning Tools

Paired with monitoring, data analytics and data storage capacity planning tools can provide valuable insights on usage and add automation to your cloud storage framework. These tools, such as AI, can analyze the historical data collected by monitoring tools, forecast future needs, and identify opportunities for greater storage utilization. Some tools can even automate tasks such as monitoring usage, provisioning storage, and scaling data capacity so performance doesn’t take a hit.

How to Implement an Effective Data Storage Capacity Planning Strategy

The most effective data storage capacity planning strategy is one that takes into account as many factors as possible. This is not a one-step process, but instead, a project that requires looking at your current and future data storage needs from multiple angles. If you’re seeking some outside perspective, TierPoint’s IT Advisory Consulting services can help. We also offer Storage as a Service (STaaS) for businesses ready to bring some workloads to the cloud.