Storage allocation becomes less political and customers become more selfmanaging
when storage servers are allocated on a group-by-group basis. It
is particularly effective if the cost of the storage service comes from a given
group’s own budget. That way, the customers and their management chain
feel that they have more control and responsibility.
Studies show that roughly 80 percent of the cost of storage is spent on
overhead—primarily support and backups—rather than in the price of the
hard drives. It should be possible to work with management to also pass on
at least some of the overhead costs to each group. This approach is best for
the company because the managers whose budgets are affected by increasing
storage needs are also the ones who can ask their groups to clean up obsolete
work and save space.
However, it is sometimes not possible to dedicate a storage server to a
single group. When a storage server must serve many groups, it is always
best to start with a storage-needs assessment with your customer base; when
the assessment is complete, you will know how much storage a group needs
currently, whether the existing storage is meeting that need, and how much
future capacity that group anticipates.
By combining data from various groups’ needs assessments, you will be
able to build an overall picture of the storage needs of the organization. In
many cases, reshuffling some existing storage may suffice to meet the needs
identified. In other cases, an acquisition plan must be created to bring in
additional storage.
Doing a storage assessment of departments and groups begins the process
of creating a storage community. As part of the assessment, groups will be
considering their storage needs from a business and work-oriented perspective
rather than simply saying, “The more, the better!”
One great benefit of bringing this change in attitude to your customers
is that the SAs are no longer “the bad guy” and instead become people who
are helping the customers implement their desired goals. Customers feel empowered
to pursue their storage agendas within their groups, and a whole set
of common customer complaints disappear from the support staff radar.