Data Storage Capacity Mostly Wasted In Data Center

Lucas123 writes "Even after the introduction of technologies such as thin provisioning, capacity reclamation and storage monitoring and reporting software, 60% to 70% of data capacity remains unused in data centers due to over provisioning for applications and misconfiguring data storage systems. While the price of storage resource management software can be high, the cost of wasted storage is even higher with 100TB equalling $1 million when human resources, floor space, and electricity is figured in. 'It's a bit of a paradox. Users don't seem to be willing to spend the money to see what they have,' said Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research."

Comments

Disk space is free

[amorsen]

Who cares if you leave disks 10% full? To get rid of the minimum of 2 disks per server you need to boot from SAN, and disk space in the SAN is often 10x the cost of standard SAS disks. Especially if the server could make do with the two built-in disks and save the cost of an FC card + FC switch port.

I/O's per second on the other hand cost real money, so it is a waste to leave 15k and SSD disks idle. A quarter full does not matter if they are I/O saturated; the rest of the capacity is just wasted, but again you often cannot buy a disk a quarter of the size with the same I/O's per second.