How Efficient Is Your Storage Environment?

Building an effective storage environment is a balancing act between performance, reliability, and efficiency. For years, improving storage efficiency took a back seat to the other goals. Now, with infrastructure budgets being cut and data growth continuing unabated, it's time to take a closer look at storage efficiency to see if there is room for improvement. Most storage teams don't have rigorous processes in place to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) of storage efficiency, and this document is intended to identify the metrics that matter most. Think of these KPIs as an essential health check — they tell you what the problem is and how severe, but solving the problem will require long-term rehabilitation and fundamental changes to daily routines. Every storage team should periodically evaluate their environment based on these KPIs to determine where they sit in terms of efficiency. And now is a good time to do so, given economic conditions.