Increase your IT Storage efficiency

It is hard to ignore the tremendous growth in storage demands. Long gone are the days when a 5Mb hard disk drive was considered huge. The need to archive data for longer, store video files and allow users huge email quotas, have all contributed to this explosion.

But this should not mean that you turn a blind eye to your business’s storage efficiency. Below are 10 tips for improving the efficiency of your storage. You can get more information on our web site www.primary-storage.com

Having control of your storage is vital. It was during the early eighties that Information Technology was first understood to be the next driving force in a still ongoing industrial revolution – an opportunity to cut cost and complexity across the industrial landscape.

Data storage became a topic for discussion in its own right at the advent and wide-spread uptake of networked computing technologies. During that time, and for the past decade, the focus of such discussions has been centred upon the device. It has been through improving hardware infrastructure and connectivity that organizations have expected to achieve storage efficiency.

Users adapt their behaviour to match available resources. If left unmanaged, there is a direct correlation between capacity availability and capacity use – increase your capacity and usage growth rates will simply accelerate.  A recent study found that over 80% of the world’s current 160 million TB of data is unstructured, or user-generated. Of this it is estimated that only 24 million TB [15%] is strategically significant – organizations world-wide are storing an astonishing 136 million TB of strategically worthless, user-generated data.Managing the contentIt is not enough to simply hope that individuals keep their non-business related data at home. Nor can organisations expect that users regularly review their stored content and delete worthless files. IT departments need to stop managing the device and start managing the content – putting a stop to policies of blindly adding capacity and begin to look at the legitimacy of storage needs before adding infrastructure and cost. Effectively managing device content is neither complicated nor time consuming:

In this series of short tips we focus on the need to increase storage efficiency.

Active management of the content of storage devices is a fundamental must for any organisation looking to improve storage efficiency. It is the only way to tackle the underlying cause of storage inefficiencies.

1. Remove media filesUse a robust reporting tool to identify all unwanted media files. Action based on the results of this report could take the form of sending a company-wide or owner-specific memo, moving the files off front-line storage or simply deleting them. Automation tools are available that can execute these actions. Expect to reclaim between 20% and 40% of used capacity.2. File blockingImpose enterprise-wide rules that prevent certain file types from being saved. Highlight for your users that they cannot save audio/video collections on corporate storage devices. Ensure your storage devices remain free from unwanted data at all times.3. Storage quotasEstablish the average usage by user within your organization, potentially at group level, and set a soft quota slightly above this average. This quota should be used to deliver clear notifications to your users – communicate what reasonable storage use is.

Expect to reduce overall storage use by between 30% and 50%, depending on the quota size used.4. Involve usersDeliver interactive reports to your end users – only they know the true value of the data they store. Clear reports and straightforward tools allow users to play a vital role in maintaining an efficient storage resource. User involvement makes sensible storage use part of the business culture.

Expect to reduce the administrative overhead associated with SRM by between 50% and 80%.5. Control re-named filesSome users will attempt to disguise their media files by renaming those files, or even saving them within other files. Identify malicious users through reports that return binary file types and discover hidden streams.

Prevent storage from being silently absorbed by hidden copyrighted materials.6. Control duplicate filesEstablish if a duplication problem exists. The results of an enterprise-wide duplicate file report will allow you to identify problem areas and raise awareness within the relevant user groups.

Anticipate up to 30% duplication rates – almost one file in three is duplicated within the network.7. Control stagnant filesIdentify files that have not been accessed within the last two years and remove those files. Data retention policies require that this data be maintained but it does not have to reside on front-line storage.Expect to reduce storage use by up to 20%.8. Control files owned by obsolete usersIdentify content owned by users that have left the organization. Confirm the stagnation of these files by checking accessed dates and backup/move or backup/delete.

Expect to reclaim between 5% and 10% of storage capacity depending on staff turn-over rates.9. Raise cost awarenessHighlight storage costs for department managers. Show the costs accumulated by their personnel and encourage action – communicate with users through quota notifications, interactive reports and via their managers.

Communicating storage cost through department managers boosts the response rate of all user focused actions.10. Charge for storage useImplementing a system of internal billing leads directly to department level efficiency. There is some degree of overhead in such a policy but if departments are already purchasing resources internally then adding storage to that system is straightforward.

Internal billing cuts usage growth rates by more than 40%.

For more information relating to Networking, Network Security and Network Storage please go to our specialist websites:

Networking                  www.primary-networks.co.uk

Network Security         http://www.primary-security.co.uk/

Network Storage          www.Primary-Storage.com

IT Services                   http://www.primarynetworksgroup.com/id2.html

Or to find out more about all of our products and services, go to www.PrimaryNetworksGroup.com