One of the biggest challenges facing storage administrators is balancing how much storage space will be required by the various applications in their data centers. Administrators are typically forced to allocate space based on anticipated storage growth. They do this to reduce the management expense and application downtime incurred when they need to add more as their business grows.

This generally results in the overprovisioning of storage capacity, which then leads to higher costs; increased power, cooling, and floor space requirements; and lower capacity utilization rates. Even with careful planning, it may be necessary to provision additional storage in the future. This may require downtime depending on the operating systems involved.

This white paper is intended for IT planners, storage architects, administrators, and others involved in evaluating, managing, operating, or designing VNX storage systems.